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THE AMERICAN STATES 

DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION 


1 775~ I 7%9 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 








(A 

f V\ 




























* . 











John Adams 
George Clinton 
George Mason 


John Hancock James Bowdoin 

Alexander Hamilton John Dickinson 

Patrick Henry Charles Cotesworth Pinckney 


NINE GREAT STATE LEADERS 










THE AMERICAN STATES 

DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION 

1775-1789 


BY 

ALLAN NEVINS 

AUTHOR OF “ILLINOIS”; “THE EVENING POST: A CENTURY OF JOURNALISM”; 
“AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY AS RECORDED BY BRITISH TRAVELLERS,” ETC. 


il2rto got* 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

IQ24 


All right.'- reserved 


Copyright, 1924, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


£73 0 3 
■ N 5Z 

Set up and printed. 

Published October, 1924. 




Printed in the United States of America by 

J. J. LITTLE ANT> IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 

OCT-8 ’?A 


©C1A807283 



In Memory of 

JOSEPH A. NEVINS 

1845-1916 








. 





PREFACE 


The design of this volume is to present a conspectus of State his¬ 
tory, as distinguished from national history, from the organization of 
the first independent State agencies at the beginning of the Revolution 
until 1789. In general, American historiography has treated each 
Colony separately till 1775, but with the year of independence has 
suddenly ceased to regard the thirteen commonwealths as separate 
entities, and followed only their collective fortunes. No real at¬ 
tempt has been made to synthesize State history for this period, or 
any other. For that matter, the work of the local historian, refusing 
to look beyond his State boundaries, has been distressingly uneven. 
Many states have no good historical record. The seminary studies 
initiated at Johns Hopkins .by Herbert Baxter Adams, those of the 
Columbia department of history, the better volumes of the American 
Commonwealth Series, and such works as General Edward Mc- 
Crady’s history of South Carolina till 1783, and Mr. H. J. Ecken- 
rode’s history of Virginia during the Revolution, represent genuinely 
scientific research and skilled interpretation. But they leave wide 
fields of State history quite unexplored. 

While to a. large extent this volume is a correlation of monographic 
material and the best State histories, it is also built upon extensive 
research in the sources, and for a number of States supplies a his¬ 
torical record not to be had in any other form. It is hoped that 
it will both furnish a background to the study of national history, 
and contribute to a stronger interest in State history merely as 
such. The whole State field has been unduly neglected. Important 
provinces of legislation belong largely to the States—education, 
transportation, suffrage, control and protection of labor, crime and 
punishment, the regulation of business, public amusements and 
morals. The development of constitutional ideas within the States 
is as interesting as changes in the Federal Constitution and its inter¬ 
pretation. In politics, State and Federal influences constantly inter¬ 
act. Who can understand Calhoun’s career without a knowledge of 

vii 


PREFACE 


viii 

South Carolina politics, and particularly the compromises between 
up-country and low-country interests, which made him the con¬ 
sistent enemy of any system which gave tyrannical power to a mere 
numerical majority? Who can understand Thaddeus Stevens s ca¬ 
reer in Congress without knowing something of his conduct in the 
Buckshot War in Pennsylvania? 

The author believes that this book possesses a greater unity than 
might appear at first sight. In the introductory chapter an effort is 
made to furnish some essential information upon the thirteen Colo¬ 
nies and their governments. Then follow two chapters tracing the 
origin and early growth of independent agencies of State government. 
The crystallization of governmental ideas into written constitutions 
is described in chapter four, and the development and revision of the 
constitutions in chapter five. Few Americans know very much about 
politics in the various States during and just after the Revolution, 
and chapters six to nine inclusive treat the subject in detail. The 
financial history of the States has never before been explored save 
in those aspects which bear directly upon national finance, and the 
sweeping change in social outlook and social legislation which accom¬ 
panied the Revolution has also been neglected; each is given a spe¬ 
cial chapter. There naturally follows a discussion of the relation of 
the States to one another and the central government, leading to 
the formation of a really integrated nation. The outstanding fact 
emphasized by the whole survey is that State history was much less 
confused and chaotic in this period than is usually supposed, and 
that it showed a fairly orderly and systematic march toward impor¬ 
tant goals. 

To weave thirteen strands into a single fabric without confusion 
is a difficult task. Narrative and exposition must frequently double 
and redouble upon themselves. The Greek poetess rebuked Pindar, 
when he celebrated all the Theban gods and goddesses in a single 
hymn, by saying that he should sow with the hand and not the sack. 
No one believes more than the author in the selective role of the 
historian. But in this instance he has thought it best to aim at 
thoroughness, and to omit no State in any department of the book. 
The volume is meant to serve as the cornerstone of a series, and will 
shortly be followed by a treatment of State history 1789-1815 in 
which the selective principle will be given full play. 

For the errors which the book contains the author is alone to be 


PREFACE 


ix 


held responsible. But he wishes to acknowledge gratefully the as¬ 
sistance and counsel he has received from many scholars, and in 
especial from Professor Evarts B. Greene, Professor Dixon R. Fox, 
Professor Samuel F. Bemis, Professor Richard Purcell, and the late 
Mr. Gaillard Hunt. Constant aid has been given by Miss Gertrude 
M. Carey of the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, and 
Chairman Edward F. McSweeney has been unfailing in his encour¬ 
agement. The index is the work of Mr. David M. Matteson, who 
has given valuable advice in many particulars. 




TABLE OF CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 

The Colonies Befor^/£heir Union 

page 

An evolution rather than revolution. i 

Four types of colonial polity.. 2 

The governments of New England. 3-6 

Faults of proprietary government. 6-9 

The seven royal, provinces. 9,10 

Inequitable representation at the South. 11 

Struggle of frontier and lowlands.11,12 

True social democracy rare.12,13 

Modern political methods develop.13,14 


CHAPTER II 

Beginnings of the Transition from Colonies to States 


Gap between radicals and conservatives.15,16 

Typical grievances of the colonies. 16 

Four disputes in North Carolina.17-24 

Two ideas in fundamental conflict.25,26 

Role of the legislatures in the Revolution. 26 

Virginia Burgesses take the lead.27, 28 

Virginia’s Provincial Convention born.28, 29 

Beginnings of the Revolution in Massachusetts.29,30 

The Massachusetts towns organize.31,32 

The legislature goes as far as it dares.32-35 

A Provincial Convention organized.36-38 

New Hampshire takes similar action. 39 

The Port Bill electrifies America. 39,40 

Provincial Conventions meet in Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Caro¬ 
lina . 40-42 

’South Carolina proves conservative.42,43 

New Jersey holds a convention. 44,45 

Regular legislatures act in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware . . 45-47 

New York and Georgia laggard.47~5o 

Popular agitation in New York. 5 o ~57 

Gradual growth of patriot sentiment. 58-60 

Crudity of most early Provincial Congresses.60-62 

xi 


) 































xii 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Their economic measures against England.63-65 

Approach of war foreseen. 66 

Military measures in Massachusetts.67-69 

Work of committees of safety.69, 70 

Other New England Colonies arm. 7 ° 

The South prepares to fight. 73 

The battle of Lexington. 74 

CHAPTER III 

The Emergence of Popular Government 

Leading royal governors flee. 75~78 

Governor Wanton of Rhode Island deposed. 80 

Eden of Maryland. 81 

Troubles of South Carolina’s new governor. 82 

Warlike preparations in the Middle Colonies.82,83 

Georgia and New York at last act.83-86 

Governor Tryon flees to a warship. 87 

Regularization of the revolutionary agencies. 88 

Massachusetts resumes charter government. 89 

New Hampshire frames a rough constitution.89, 90 

Development of New Jersey, North Carolina, and Maryland Congresses 91, 92 

Temporary governments in other Colonies.93, 94 

Conservative tendencies in the nascent governments. 95 

Reforms nevertheless effected.96,97 

Fate of ultra-conservatives and Tories.97, 98 

Heated radical-conservative struggle in Pennsylvania.99,100 

Contest between Assembly and radicals.100-102 

The Assembly swept aside.103-105 

The Charter overthrown; ensuing bitterness.106-108 

Fighting becomes general. 108 

South Carolina won to independence.110,111 

North Carolina and Virginia support it.111,112 

New York waits till after July 4. II2 

Attitude of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland.112,113 

Logical sureness of revolutionary process.. 114,116 

CHAPTER IV 

The Writing of the State Constitutions 

Novelty of written popular Constitutions.117,118 

American constitutional growth began 1619. II9 

Influence of Locke, Montesquieu, and others.120-12 2 

Constitutional plans of Adams and Paine.122-124 

Plan attributed to Carter Braxton .... TO _, 






































TABLE OF CONTENTS 


xiii 


PAGE 

Conditions of Constitution-making.126-128 

The bodies; how chosen.128-132 

Pennsylvania’s dramatic reform.132,133 

Xeaders; methods of drafting.133-139 

Clash of aristocrats and radicals.139,140 

Radical victory in North Carolina.141,142 

A less strongly marked victory in Virginia.143-148 

Radicals control the Pennsylvania Convention.149-152 

Their eccentric Constitution.152-156 

A conservative victory in Maryland.157,158 

New York’s conservative Constitution adopted.158-164 

Long life of several Constitutions. 164 

Precautions for popular control. 165 

Ill-balanced character.166-168 

Right of judicial review.168-170 


CHAPTER V 

The Constitutions in Operation: Their Revision 


Rapid constitutional changes.171,172 

Three stages of constitutional revision.172,173 

South Carolina’s revision of 1778.. 173-175 

Short-cut revision fails in Massachusetts.175-178 

The special constitutional convention of 1780.179-181 

The first Massachusetts Constitution.181, 182 

New Hampshire revises her Constitution.182-184 

Attacks on first Pennsylvania Constitution.184-186 

The Council of Censors quarrels.186-188 

Revision defeated.189-191 

The deeper factors in Pennsylvania.191,192 

Agitation for reform in South Carolina.192,193 

Also in Virginia and Georgia.193-196 

Influence of the Federal Constitution. 196 

Pennsylvania’s second revising convention.197,198 

Work of James Wilson, Gallatin, and Mifflin.198-200 

South Carolina’s new Constitution.200-202 

Georgia’s new Constitution adopted.202-204 

Constitutional ideas in other States.204, 205 


CHAPTER VI 

Political Development in New England 


General character of State governments.206, 207 

Leaders in New England affairs.207-209 

Rivalry of Hancock and Samuel Adams in Massachusetts .... 210-212 






































XIV 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Hancock’s victory and its results..12-214 

Growing economic troubles; Hancock resigns.214,215 

The Bowdoin-Cushing contest.216,217 

Shays’s rebellion suppressed. 217 

Hancock returns to power.218-220 

The New Hampshire leaders.220,221 

Trumbull’s ascendancy in Connecticut.222-225 

Rhode Island’s stormy record.225, 226 

Initial victory of conservatives.226-228 

The paper-money earthquake.228-230 

Overthrow of the soft-money party.231-233 

The Federal Constitution a New England issue. 233 

Connecticut and Massachusetts ratify.234-236 

New Hampshire acts tardily.236, 237 

A sharp struggle in Rhode Island.237-240 

New Hampshire politics after ratification.240, 241 

Massachusetts politics after ratification.241-244 

CHAPTER VII 

Political Development in the Middle States 

Parallel between New York and Pennsylvania politics. 245 

George Clinton chosen first New York governor.245-248 

Pennsylvania’s first State election.249-252 

Struggle between radicals and conservatives.250-254 

Demands by the “Furious Whigs”. 255 

Execution of Roberts and Carlisle. 256 

Joseph Reed’s administration.257,258 

Committee tyranny; the Fort Wilson riot.259-262 

George Bryan’s Leadership.262,263 

The college suppressed; paper money excesses.263-267 

Persecution of the New York loyalists.267, 268 

The Trespass Act; Rutgers vs. Waddington.269-272 

Hamilton attacks the persecutors. 272 

Their policy has to burn itself out.273, 274 

New leaders emerge in Pennsylvania.275, 276 

Fresh legislative battles between radicals and conservatives .... 276-278 

Domestic disorders ensue.278,279 

Follies of a radical legislature.279-281 

Benjamin Franklin elected president. 281 

The impost question in New York.282-284 

Hamilton and Schuyler beaten by Clinton.285-287 

The impost plan loses.288, 289 

New York and the Federal Constitution.28^-291 

Franklin’s three achievements in Pennsylvania.291-201 








































TABLE OF CONTENTS xv 

PAGE 

Pennsylvania ratifies the Federal Constitution.293-294 

The Federalist tide in Pennsylvania and New York.295, 296 

The Clinton-Yates campaign in New York.297-300 

Hamilton gains a moral victory.301,302 

William Livingston’s control of New Jersey. 302 

His firm course during the war.303,304 

Political history of Delaware.305-307 

CHAPTER VIII 

Political Development: The Upper South 

Maryland and Virginia well governed. 308 

Quarrels between Maryland Senate and Assembly.309-312 

Maryland’s first three Governors. 312 

Samuel Chase and Luther Martin.312,313 

Heated politics in 1784-85.314-316 

Maryland’s legislative wisdom. 317 

Ratification of the Federal Constitution.318-320 

Party divisions intensified. 321 

The Federalists triumphant.322,323 

Importance of Virginia politics. 323 

Patrick Henry’s service as Governor.324,325 

Jefferson as progressive leader. 325,326 

Entail and church establishment attacked.326-328 

Governor Jefferson and the British invasions.328-332 

A final British stroke; Jefferson humiliated.332-335 

A conservative ascendancy ensues. 335-337 

Reform measures later succeed. 338,339 

Edmund Randolph as Governor. 339 

Political issues of 1785-88.340-345 

The Mississippi question.345-348 

Struggle over the Federal Constitution. 349~35i 

Ratification; Henry’s battle for revision.352-354 

Defeat of the Anti-Federalists. 355-357 

CHAPTER IX 

Political Development: In the Lower South 

North and South Carolina contrasted .. 358 

Edenton and Wilmington described. 359-361 

Radical leaders of the west.361,362 

Richard Caswell’s administration.362-364 

Crudity of legislation .... 364-366 

Military perils; inadequate preparations.366-368 

Political conditions in South Carolina.368,369 







































TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Rivalry of Rutledge and Gadsden. 370 - 37 2 

British invasion and the patriot rally. 373—3 77 

Difficulties facing North Carolina.378-380 

Conflict between legislature and Governor.380-382 

Burke’s administration and capture.382-384 

Governor Martin and legislative follies.385-387 

Federal obligations neglected.387-389 

South Carolina’s Jacksonborough legislature .. 389 

Confiscation and amercement. 39 I_ 393 

The British evacuation. 393-395 

Greene’s friction with the legislature . .. 396,397 

Disorders of the radicals. 397 _ 4°3 

Clash of lowlands and uplands. 404 

South Carolina’s financial crisis, 1786.404,405 

Ratification of the Constitution.406-408 

North Carolina delays ratification.409,410 

Civil dissension in Georgia.410-412 

British conquest and guerrilla warfare.412-415 

Peace and recuperation.415, 416 

The sectional issue in Georgia; Federalism.417-419 


CHAPTER X 

Progress in Liberalism and Humanity 

A political as well as social revolution - ^ . . . . , 

Religion freedom in the New England Colonies . 

Religious restrictions in the Middle Colonies . . . 

Maryland achieves full religious liberty. 

Virginia’s struggle for disestablishment.. 

Victory completed in 1786. 

The establishment abolished in the Carolinas .... 

And in Georgia. 

Primogeniture and entail in the South. 

Their complete overthrow. 

Similar movement in other States. 

Emergence of democratic leaders. 

Original position of slavery. 

Most States stop the slave trade. 

Three New England States made free soil. 

Emancipation elsewhere in America. 

Slave trade in the Federal Convention. 

Cruelty of the criminal law. 

Reform in Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

Little progress elsewhere. 

Imprisonment of debtors . . 


. 420 

. 420-426 

. 427-429 
. 430,431 

• 431-435 

436 

. 436-440 

440 

441 

. 441-443 
. 443,444 
. 444,445 
. 445,446 
. 446,447 
448 
. 448-450 

• 450,451 

• 451-453 

• 453-455 

455 

• 455,456 











































TABLE OF CONTENTS xvii 

PAGE 

Horrifying penal conditions. 45 7-459 

Reform in Pennsylvania under Dr. Rush.459-461 

The solitary confinement movement.461,462 

Connecticut’s underground prison.462-465 

Checkered state of education in 1776. 465 

An American movement in education.466,467 

Provisions in Constitutions and statutes.468,469 

CHAPTER XI 

The States and Their Money Affairs 

Financial measures taken by Congress.470-476 

Total State payments to the nation.477, 478 

Early issues of paper money ..479-481 

Issues later in the war.482-492 

Heavy taxation instituted.492-496 

Taxation in kind; resultant losses.496-499 

Unequal distribution of taxes.499-504 

Loans at home and abroad.505-507 

Revenue from Tory estates.507-509 

The sale of State lands.509, 510 

Large income from State tariffs.510-512 

Bad mechanism of tax collection.512-515 

Paper money agitation of 1785-86. 5*5 

Its course in Pennsylvania.519-522 

In North Carolina and Georgia. 5 2 3> 5 2 4 

Harmless emissions in South Carolina and New York.525-528 

Maryland defeats paper money. 5 2 9 - 533 

The paper agitation in New England. 533-54 1 

Improvement in State finances before 1789.54 I- 543 

CHAPTER XII 

V State Quarrels and State Friendships 

Disjunction of the Colonies before 1775. 544-546 

Quarrels over boundaries and trade.547,548 

Distrust shown by State troops. 548-55 2 

Large national units deemed impossible. 55 2 

Feeling improves in the army. 554> 555 

Trade and tariffs as State issues. 555~56o 

Several States feel robbed.560-563 

Trade measures against Europe.563-565 

The Mississippi question.565-568 

Disputes over currency and contracts.568-5 7 2 

Which States fought hardest?. 574“575 






































xviii 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The South fears desertion in 1780. 575*576 

Uneven financial burdens. 577 * 57 $ 

The Vermont Dispute. 579 ~ 5$3 

The Wyoming Valley controversy.583-590 

Slighter boundary difficulties. 590, 59 * 

Maryland and the Western territory. 59 2 ~596 

The Ordinance of 1787. 597 * 59 $ 

Foreign enmities as a force toward union. 598 

British, Spanish, and Indian aggressions.599-601 

Other factors for national unity. . 602-605 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Relations of the States with Congress 

Early character and powers of Congress.606, 607 

Its slow march toward war.607-611 

Difficulty of organizing a national army.611-613 

Evils of the voluntary State quotas.614-618 

Congressional efforts at price-fixing; embargoes.616-621 

Plans for a national Constitution.622,623 

Articles of Confederation adopted.623-626 

Repeated efforts to amend them.627-630 

The impost plan of 1781 fails.630-634 

Desperate position of Congress. 635 

Second impost plan fails.637-642 

Congress tries to regulate commerce.642-644 

It demands respect for the peace treaty.645, 646 

The States commit grave infractions.646-652 

Virginia and New York rebuff Congress in 1787.653-656 

Personnel of Congress deteriorates.656-658 

The States invade the field of Congress.658-661 

The grand remedy.661-663 

CHAPTER XIV 
Facing Westward: Conclusion 

Population changes from 1760 to 1790.664,665 

A fourteenth Colony.665-667 

Settlement of Franklin or Frankland. 668 

Kentucky separates from Virginia.669,670 

Settlement of the “back lands”.671-673 

Political effects of the new frontier.674, 675 

Cpnclusioii.^75-678 

Bibliography. 6yg 

In dex. 6g3 







































THE AMERICAN STATES 

DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION 

1775-1789 




































, ' 









■ 























THE AMERICAN STATES 

i 775- i 789 

CHAPTER ONE 

THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 

“On their late revolution,” wrote Jefferson of the States when the 
war was safely over, “the changes which their new form of govern¬ 
ment rendered necessary were easily made. It was only necessary to 
say that the powers of legislation, the judiciary and the executive 
powers, hitherto exercised by persons of such and such descriptions, 
should henceforth be exercised by persons appointed in such and such 
a manner.” This is not the exaggeration it may seem. The student 
of early State institutions is struck by the fact that almost all of 
them descend directly from Colonial institutions. From the national 
point of view a true revolution occurred between 1776 and 1789. 
That noble china vase, the British Empire, to use Franklin’s image, 
was broken; and a new nation was established. But from the point 
of view of each separate State there was not so much a revolution 
as an evolution. 

Governmentally the Colonies were a diverse family before they 
cut their mother’s apron strings, and the new States showed the 
same diversity. In Pennsylvania the pre-Revolutionary government 
had only one legislative chamber, and so had the post-Revolutionary 
government.. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the highly prized 
Charters of Colonial days were preserved to be used as Constitutions 
in independence, and the faults and merits of the olden time were 
transmitted side by side to the new. In South Carolina and Virginia 
there were glaring inequalities in the legislative representation of 
the different sections, and both States after 1783 presented these 
same inequalities. In Colonies where the King’s Governor was weak, 
like North Carolina, as the people’s Governor he was weaker than 
ever, and in one where he had been strong, New York, he retained a 
comparatively large part of his strength. Some inhabitants of New 

1 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


V 


Jersey saw the evil of having the Governor in Colonial days a power¬ 
ful judicial officer, but he remained the Chancellor after Yorktown. 
The necessity for making the State governments more fully answer- 
able to the new democratic theories, and for making them adequate 
to the stem practical demands of the time, dictated changes and 
amplifications of the Colonial governments; but no understanding 
of State polity is possible without some understanding of Colonial 
polity. 

Four main types of Colonial government were distinguishable just 
before the Revolution. Massachusetts stood alone as a Province 
having a Crown-controlled executive, but possessing a much-cherished 
Charter. Her neighbors Connecticut and Rhode Island boasted of 
Charters, and in addition controlled their own executive branches. 
There were three Proprietary Provinces, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
and Maryland, the executive administration of which, with many 
other rights and benefits, was vested in the Penn and Calvert fami¬ 
lies. The other seven Provinces were administered by Crown- 
appointed Governors, and they had no Constitutions save those of 
an unwritten nature fixed by tradition, practise, and the customary 
form of the instructions sent the Governors from London. 

The 300,000 people who lived in Massachusetts in 1770 were as 
pure a racial stock as could be found in the world, remarkably 
homogeneous in their customs, manners, and habits of mind as 
well as in blood and language. They had a sturdy pride in their 
purity of race, high intelligence, and the choiceness of the grain 
‘‘sifted,” as old Governor William Stoughton said, to send “over into 
this wilderness.” 1 Since the rocky and largely infertile country 
neither attracted many men of wealth nor made them, extremes of 
riches and poverty were uncommon, and social differences had less 
opportunity than in other sections to root themselves in material con¬ 
siderations. A fierce democracy, feared outside New England as 
“leveling,” was the result. 2 There was indeed a careful social grada¬ 
tion, but it arose in the main from a regard for ancestry, service to 
the state, ability, and education. At Harvard to the eve of the 
Revolution the students’ names were arranged in the order of the 


1 8 ?°£ d by L? d ge, “English Colonies in America,” 409. 

(March,? eries V, VoU II, 313, where Jeremy Belknap write 
*; 3 ,’ c 4 .u Where shall we look for an equal division of property? No 
J" Soutl jern States, where every white man is the lordly tyrant of ai 

viSds thiripn S ‘nr N °^ f ln the great trad, "S. towns and cities, where cash in fund 
yields thirteen or sixteen per cent., and in trade much more. The yeomanrv o 
New England are, in point of equality, the fittest materials for a republic. . . .” 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 


3 


respectability of their parentage, the leading families including the 
Hutchinsons, Saltonstalls, Winthrops, and Quincys. It was the glory 
of the Province, as of Scotland, that intellectual distinction really 
distinguished. The educational system of New England, the best 
in America, was better before than just after the Revolution. No¬ 
where else in America was there such a body of high-spirited, intelli¬ 
gent liberals as the tradesmen and mechanics of Boston, and the 
townsmen and yeomen of eastern Massachusetts, save in the 
Merrimac Valley of New Hampshire, where they had spread north¬ 
ward. Hilly western Massachusetts, like western New Hampshire, 
showed the radicalism and equalitarianism that almost always mark 
a frontier. 

Though saddled with a government designed to check them, the 
people of Massachusetts had won a fairly satisfactory self-expression 
in politics by 1765. The Crown appointed the Governor, Lieutenant- 
Governor, and Secretary; and the Governor could veto any legisla¬ 
tion, disapprove any choice for Speaker, summon, prorogue, or 
adjourn the House, and—with the consent of the upper chamber, or 
Council—make important appointments. But the House, to which 
each town was entitled to send up two delegates annually, always 
showed a self-assertion which boded ill for any Crown official who 
trenched upon the people’s rights. At the beginning of the eighteenth 
century it refused to fix a permanent salary for executive officers, and 
within twenty years it had made the annual allowances so shabby 
and precarious that the Governor refused to accept his stipend. 
Defending itself in a formal statement in 1728, the House asserted 
the “undoubted right of all Englishmen, by Magna Charta, to raise 
and dispose of money for the public service of their own free accord, 
without compulsion”; 3 and this position, identical with that of the 
House of Commons, it maintained. 

The Legislature established the judiciary, and in spite of opposi¬ 
tion from England, managed to keep it under a certain degree of 
popular control. The House, sitting each year with the old Council, 
elected the new Council of twenty-eight, subject to the Governor’s 
consent. Decade after decade the representatives of the people 
engaged in new quarrels with the Governors. In the time of the 
very first Crown appointee, Sir William Phips, an energetic, hot¬ 
headed native of Maine who favored some unpopular measures, we 

8 This document is given in full in Hutchinson’s “Hist, of Mass.,” II, 309 ff. 
(third ed., 1795)* 


4 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


read of the “friends of Phips” and the “court party” as opposed to 
the popular party. We need mention only the most prominent execu¬ 
tives thereafter—Dudley, Stoughton, Burnet, Belcher, Shirley, 
Pownall, Bernard, Hutchinson—to recall the harsh quarrels con¬ 
nected with each; a series of quarrels the dramatic quality of which 
Hawthorne caught in his tale of the ghostly procession of Governors 
which appeared to Gage on his last night in the Province House. 
Finally came the popular disturbances of the period following the 
Stamp Act and Townshend Impost Act, and the punitive measures 
of the British Government with which all are familiar. Troops 
were poured into Boston as if it were a conquered city, the trials 
of British officers for capital offenses were transferred out of the 
Province, Boston harbor was closed, and the fisheries on the New¬ 
foundland Banks, which provided the Colony with much of its food, 
were forbidden to New Englanders. Worst of all, the Charter, 
the shining palladium of Massachusetts liberties, was altered by 
giving the Crown the right to appoint the Council—a right it already 
possessed in New Hampshire—and by increasing the powers of the 
Crown Governor. 

When we turn to Rhode Island and Connecticut, we turn to 
Provinces governed under Charters to which they were justified 
in holding tenaciously throughout and after the Colonial period. 
Had all the Colonies been under such rule, there might have been 
no Revolution. Under Rhode Island’s Charter of 1663, and Con¬ 
necticut’s of 1662, there was no point at which the authority of the 
British Government directly interfered with the administration of 
the Colonies. The freemen of each Province in May annually chose 
a Governor, Deputy-Governor, and an upper house; the towns chose 
deputies to sit in a lower house; and in May and October the 
Governor and two houses sat as a General Assembly. These General 
Assemblies proceeded, to all practical purposes, as if the two Prov¬ 
inces were self-contained republics. In both governments the salient 
characteristic was the dominance of the Legislature over the execu¬ 
tive and judicial branches, a dominance that endured long after 
the Revolution. In both the upper house was composed of “Assist¬ 
ants,” who in Connecticut were twelve in number, elected on a 
general ticket, but in Rhode Island were one for each town, or by 
1790 thirty in all. As for the lower chamber, in Connecticut each 
town sent it not more than two deputies, while in Rhode Island not 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 


5 

more than six were sent by Newport and either four or two by other 
cities or towns. 4 

The most interesting and the unique feature of Connecticut’s gov¬ 
ernment was the close connection between it and the ecclesiastical 
power, making the Colony almost a theocracy. This connection was 
regarded with not merely complacency, but pride. The churches and 
government used the same assessment lists in levying rates and 
taxes; the civil power collected the church rates by distraint where 
necessary; if the church neglected to support its minister, the Gen¬ 
eral Assembly decided the proper scale of maintenance; and if any 
congregation remained without a minister for a year, the civil 
authorities could compel it to fill the pulpit. The binding together 
of all the Congregational or Presbyterian churches upon the Say- 
brook platform (1708) was followed by a legislative decree that 
the churches so united should be considered thenceforth “estab¬ 
lished” by law. Generation after generation the political leaders 
and ecclesiastical leaders maintained their firm alliance, bulwark¬ 
ing each others’ power. Just as civil officers took pains to see that 
Congregationalism was protected and financially nourished, so the 
clergy saw that public opinion was molded to the support of a 
trusted Governor and Assistants. Yale College was kept under 
church influence, and made a feeder for the church and the civil 
service alike. Thus was built up a Standing Order, so-called, that 
was unshakable. Rhode Island’s perfect religious freedom stood in 
sharp contrast with it. 

As time wore on, the taxation of dissenters in Connecticut for 
the Congregational Church was partly halted. But serious addi¬ 
tional limitations upon the excellence of the government lay in the 
fact that the Legislature had complete control of the judiciary, 
while the upper chamber itself enjoyed large judicial powers; in 
the possession by this upper chamber, the Assistants, of a larger 
share in the executive power than was proper; and in an unfair 
procedure in the election of Assistants, tending to keep veterans in 
office against the rivalry of younger men, no matter how much abler. 
A dangerous authority was thus given to a dozen men, who held 
office year after year until worn out in harness. 

Upon the whole, however, Connecticut’s later Colonial history is 
a history of consistent prosperity, progress, and harmony. In the 

* See Thorpe, “Constitutions and Charters,” for text of all Colonial and State 
Constitutions. 


6 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


century following the grant of the Charter, she had but nine Gov¬ 
ernors, the general rule being for each to serve until he died or was 
superannuated. The people learned to administer their finances 
wisely and frugally; to adjust executive power to the demands of 
the changing times; to pass wholesome laws, and to interpret them 
wholesomely in the courts. Crime was rare, and order was rigidly 
preserved. Any youth of parts could rise through the local schools 
to the well-supported college at New Haven. The Colony was 
checkered by small farms, so well cared for that the people boasted 
they made more profit from mowing land than the New Yorkers 
made from wheat land, and that the butter, cheese, and packed 
meats of Connecticut were esteemed by the West Indies the best to 
be had. This prosperity encouraged a rapid growth of population, 
so that by the Revolution Connecticut not only had more inhabitants 
to the square mile than any other Colony—there were 198,000 in 
1774—but was known for the settlers whom it sent north and west. 
Rhode Island also prospered in material ways, but her history was 
troubled, being disfigured in especial by persistent paper money 
follies. Unfortunately for her general progress, and for the charac¬ 
ter of her government after 1776, little of her wealth was put into 
schools. 

We meet a different kind of government when we turn to the 
three proprietary Provinces, and especially to the greatest. The 
taint of feudalism was upon the colonial system of Pennsylvania. 
It was impossible for the later Penns to take anything but a selfish 
view of the great domain of which they were proprietors—to look 
upon it other than as an estate from which they were to 1 wring the 
utmost revenue. Contention, said Franklin, was “radical, interwoven 
in the Constitution, and so became of the very nature of proprietary 
governments.” 5 The Constitution, the latest of William Penn’s 
Charters, was simple enough. The executive branch consisted of 
a Governor and of an advisory council which was kept at the 
Governor’s beck and call. The legislative power was vested in the 
unicameral Assembly, chosen yearly by a broad electorate. The 
Governor’s powers were large, for he possessed a veto, and made 
all judicial and most civil appointments. But the cardinal element 
of contention to which Franklin referred was not the Governor’s 


r,L F ?"wSc ” < R’i°ii Th0 ^^ htS TT? n the P rese nt Situation of our Public Affairs,” 
fufly ^ ks ’ Bigelow Ed., Ill, 28b ff.) analyzed the government of Pennsylvania 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 


7 

wide authority, but the fact of the Proprietary’s ownership. He 
had the rights and revenues of a mediaeval baron centuries after 
the reasons for a feudal establishment had ceased to exist in Europe, 
and held them in a new, untamed country, amid a population whose 
civil and religious convictions were opposed to them. These over¬ 
seas potentates, inheriting the government, owning millions of acres 
of wild land and enormous areas from which they drew quit-rents, 
and able in scores of ways to interfere with the people as no Crown 
Governor could, too often wished to give nothing, and to take 
everything. 

The fact that the Legislature consisted of only one house simpli¬ 
fied the constant struggle between it and the Governors. The 
Quakers were the most powerful and long the dominant group in 
the Assembly, but in spite of their innate conservatism they stood 
firmly for the colonists’ rights. The principal bones of contention 
till near the end involved money considerations. They included the 
revenues of the Proprietor, the question of his right to participate 
with the Assembly in disposing of the money raised by taxes and 
otherwise, the question of the exemption of his estates from taxes, 
and his greed in laying hands upon the Indian country. The 
Assembly always tried to protect itself from any unjust clauses in 
the Proprietary’s instructions to the Deputy-Governor by insisting 
upon a knowledge of them, and only a few Deputy-Governors 
proved defiant. It also maintained that the Deputy-Governor must 
disregard the instructions if they violated the Charter as the Assem¬ 
bly interpreted it. But what cost the Assembly its hardest struggle 
was its attempt to vindicate a right to appropriate and use the 
public moneys without interference from the executive. 

In the spring of 1764 the Legislature, goaded beyond endurance 
by the efforts of the selfish Thomas Penn to take advantage of the 
Seven Years’ War and its perils to wring concessions for his purse 
and his authority, passed a set of condemnatory resolutions without 
a single dissenting vote. 6 It denounced Penn’s claim for special tax 
exemptions. It accused him of making great land purchases from 
the Indians, holding these lands vacant for a better market, and thus 
keeping the frontier so thinly settled as to invite Indian attacks. 

•These twenty-six “aggrievances” are in the “Votes and Proceedings” of the 
House, 1758 and succeeding years (1775 ed.), 337-339 5 and in Pa. Mag. Hist, and 
Biog V, 70 ff. For the enduring memory of the Proprietary’s responsibility for 
the Indian massacres, see a letter of the Phila. Committee of Safety, Pa. Packet, 
June 1 7, 1 776- 


8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


The exorbitant prices he demanded for his acres, it added, had driven 
thousands of Pennsylvania families to the cheap lands of the South. 
To swell his revenues by license fees, Penn had encouraged dram¬ 
shops until they were a serious element of moral corruption. He 
had tried to gain absolute control over the judges, and to render 
his command of the militia so> complete that it would endanger the 
popular liberties. The Proprietary’s wealth would grow with that 
of the Province, the Assembly stated, until it became a menace to 
the Crown and the people alike. Some of these charges were exag¬ 
gerated, and in justice to even Thomas Penn, it must be remembered 
that with a good opportunity, the Assembly might have overtaxed 
his estates; but the gravamen of the indictment was sound. For 
various reasons, however, the movement to supplant the Proprietary 
Government by Crown Government failed. 

The most scandalous feature of Pennsylvania’s government was 
the frequent bargaining between people and Governors for the pas¬ 
sage of useful laws. Franklin has succinctly described it: 7 

Ever since the revenue of the quit-rents first, and after that the revenue of tavern 
licenses, were settled irrevocably on our Proprietors and Governors, they have 
looked on those incomes as their proper estate, for which they were under no obli¬ 
gations to the people: and when they afterwards concurred in passing any useful laws, 
they considered them as so many jobs, for which they ought to be particularly paid. 
Hence arose the custom of presents twice a year to the Governors, at the close of 
each session in which laws were passed, given at the time of passing. They usually 
amounted to a thousand pounds per annum. But when the Governors and Assemblies 
disagreed, so that laws were not passed, the presents were withheld. 

The fencing between the Assembly and Governor was sometimes 
finely humorous. On one occasion, several bills desired by the 
people were, when the session neared its end, in the hands of Gov¬ 
ernor Thomas. The House informed the Governor that it awaited 
his “result” upon the bills, and he sent back word that he was 
considering them, and meanwhile awaited the “result” of the House. 
Further interchanges led the Governor to state that as he had 
received evidence of a “good disposition” on the part of the Assembly, 
he would show the like himself by sending down the bills without 
any objection. This was not equivalent to saying that he would 
approve them, and the cautious Assembly therefore passed a resolu¬ 
tion that when the Governor signed the bills before him, and such 
others as might yet be presented, it would pay him, in two orders, 
£1,500. The orders were drawn, the Governor arranged a meeting, 

T “Works,” Bigelow ed., Ill, 311. 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 


9 

and while he signed with one hand, he took the money with the 
other. 8 

Yet after all, many of the grievances of the popular party were 
allayed just before the Revolution. When Thomas Penn, “a mis¬ 
erable churl, always intent upon griping and saving,” as Franklin 
said, gave way to John Penn, who had many fine traits and himself 
came to America to govern, Pennsylvania entered upon a fairly 
placid phase of proprietary rule. The Quakers were not only peace¬ 
ful by religion, but were attached to England by blood and tradition, 
while the Germans of the country districts were a slow, cautious 
race, so that the people as a whole, more than a quarter million in 
1 775, seemed conservative in their attitude towards the Revolu¬ 
tionary movement. By the property qualification for the ballot, 
fifty acres or fifty pounds, and by the fact that before the Revolu¬ 
tion the five frontier counties—Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, 
and Northampton—had only ten Assemblymen, while Philadelphia, 
Chester, and Bucks counties had twenty-six, this conservatism was 
strengthened. Delaware, which had its own Assembly and Council 
—a bicameral Legislature—but shared Pennsylvania’s Governor, was 
similarly conservative. As for Maryland, the popular house or 
Burgesses there had gained a power considerably greater than that 
of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and maintained entire control over 
the public moneys, while it even denied the Governor’s right (after 
1733 the proprietors ruled only through deputized Governors) to 
veto legislation. 

The governments of the seven Royal Provinces had much in com¬ 
mon. In all the Governor was appointed by the Crown, and the 
other executive officers, with a few exceptions, were named either by 
the Crown or the Governor. In all the Legislature consisted of a 
House and Council, the former popularly elected and the latter 
appointed with an eye to the strengthening of the Governor. The 
history of all seven is largely a history of quarrels between the 
Governors and Houses. New York had probably the most unfor¬ 
tunate government, a government arbitrary, corrupt, and inefficient. 
There, and there alone, the Governor usually had a considerable 
wing of the Assembly under his influence, partly because the south¬ 
ern part of the Province contained a warmly loyal population, partly 
because he added to his other means of obtaining support the power 

• W. C. Bruce, “Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed,” II, 106. 


10 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of granting land-patents at low quit-rents to favorites. In Virginia 
the Governor’s authority was equally great. There he was executor 
of the laws, commander of the militia, Chancellor and Chief Justice, 
and virtually head of the established Anglican Church, for though 
he did not appoint the clergy, he inducted them into their charges. 
He could propose legislation, veto bills, convoke, prorogue, and 
dissolve the Assembly, and pardon minor criminals. He had a wide 
patronage, and he added to his income and his political power by his 
control over quit-rents, the disposal of unpatented lands, and the 
exchange of public money. 9 In no Crown Colony was the authority 
of the Governor weak, and in all his social dignity was very great. 
In even poor New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth wished 
to found a family supported by great landed estates, and he built 
at Portsmouth one of the largest mansions in the North—the man¬ 
sion celebrated, as the scene of his romantic second marriage, in 
Longfellow’s poem “Lady Wentworth.” In Virginia, Botetourt 
was given his coach by George III, and made a great show of 
reflected royal glory as he took office. 

The differences among the seven Legislatures were more salient 
than among the seven Governors. They varied greatly in size. 
Virginia counted no Burgesses in 1760, two being elected from each 
county and one each from the three borough towns and the College 
of William and Mary. New York’s lower chamber contained fewer 
than one-third that number, New Jersey’s had only 24 members, 
and South Carolina’s consisted in 1770 of only 48, elected triennially 
by the parishes. There were fairly wide discrepancies in the property 
qualifications for the ballot, and wider ones in the property require¬ 
ment for a seat in the House. Thus in New Hampshire voters had 
to have a £50 estate, in Virginia 50 unsettled acres or 25 acres and 
a house, in North Carolina or Georgia 50 acres, and in South 
Carolina 100 acres. In North Carolina any man with 100 acres 
might sit in the House, while in South Carolina he had to have 500 
acres and 10 slaves, or to be worth £1,000 in land, houses, and other 
property. As for the Council during late Colonial times, in Virginia 
and New Hampshire a Governor was more likely to count on its 
opposition in any quarrel with the House than on its support. In 
New York and South Carolina, however, it was almost consistently 
with the Crown, while in North Carolina, one of the keenest observers 

... 9 s ^, e p - S. Flippin, “Royal Govt, in Va.,” 211, for the encroachments of the 
Virginia Burgesses on the Governor’s power. 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION n 

just before the Revolution tells us, the chief defect of the Con¬ 
stitution was the fact that the Councilors were the tools of the 
executive; they “always advised as they supposed the Governor 
desired, and acted even in their legislative capacity as the merest 
servants of his will.” 

In one important respect the lower houses of the Southern legis¬ 
latures were alike: the scheme of representation was inequitable. 
The apportionment of two Burgesses to each county in Virginia was 
unfair, for the counties varied widely in size and population, and 
they were smallest in the Tidewater section of great plantations and 
rich planters. The gentry hence enjoyed a decided advantage over 
the small farmers of the uplands and Shenandoah. In North Caro¬ 
lina Governor Tryon complained of a similar injustice, stating that 
in 1767 the counties of the coastal region north and east of Cape 
Fear sent five members each to the Legislature, Bertie County sent 
three, and all the counties of the western reaches only two each. 
The establishment of new counties in western North Carolina was 
much too slow to meet the needs of the swelling population. In 
South Carolina the upland settlers had practically no representation, 
for they were afforded a semblance of local government and of a 
voice in the Legislature only by the makeshift extension of the 
nearest lowland parishes 200 miles west to the Cherokee country. 
They long clamored in vain for the creation of upland parishes, 
which would save them the necessity of traveling perhaps many 
scores of miles to court, and would automatically give them seats in 
the Commons House. Instead, as a concession just before the Revo¬ 
lution, the upper country was divided into four judicial districts, 
Orangeburgh, Camden, Cheraws, and Ninety-Six, so that justice at 
least was somewhat nearer the settlers. Georgia was too young a 
Colony to feel distinctly any sectional inequality, but the injustice 
was taking root. 

'{—Almost everywhere from Pennsylvania to Georgia a struggle be¬ 
tween east and west, Tidewater and uplands, cut in the later Colonial 
period across the alignment between people and Crown. In each 
larger Province the self-assertion of the democratic, individualistic 
settlers of the hill and inland regions marked the decade 1760-1770. 
The border ravages of the Indians in Pennsylvania during 1763 
were followed by the disorders of the “Paxton boys” from near the 
present city of Harrisburg. They massacred some Christian Indians, 


12 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


and by an angry march upon Philadelphia, which they thought in¬ 
different to their sufferings, threatened a civil war, which Franklin 
and others averted. This episode marks the beginnings of the pre¬ 
dominance of the Ulster Scotch and other Calvinists in Pennsylvania 
affairs, replacing the old Quaker supremacy. In Virginia the plan¬ 
ter oligarchy ruled almost unchallenged until in 1765-66 there trans¬ 
pired a scandalous mismanagement of the treasury by a rich repre¬ 
sentative of this class; and the explosion threw the House into the 
hands of the uplanders. In North Carolina the sufferings of the 
inland population from corrupt sheriffs, court officials, and tax 
collectors, from heavy taxes, charges for land-patents, illegal fees, and 
quit-rents, caused graver and graver disturbances as the sixties 
wore on. These culminated when the backwoodsmen of a territory 
comprising all or part of seven counties in what is now the north 
central part of the State rose in the Regulators’ Rebellion; and the 
vigor with which the lowland militia under Tryon crushed this 
outbreak at the battle of the Alamance (1771) bred an intense 
hatred for the coast country among the discontented settlers. 
Similar disorders in upper South Carolina reached a crisis in 1769, 
but here bloodshed was averted. 

Outside of New England no Colony, not even North Carolina, 
closely approached a true democracy in its social conditions. In New 
York, Cadwallader Colden in 1765 distinguished four different 
classes. First, of course, came the great landholders, some of whose 
estates comprised tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, on which 
the tenants were counted by villages. Those of the Van Rensselaer, 
Van Courtlandt, and Livingston families were each entitled to a spe¬ 
cial representative in the Assembly, while the Schuylers, Cuylers, 
Philipses, Morrises, and others lived in almost feudal state. Then 
came the lawyers, to whom much deference was paid; then the mer¬ 
chants, many of them enriched by illicit trade in the French War; 
and finally, the farmers and mechanics, who “are the most useful and 
the most moral, but allwise made the dupes of the former.” 10 New 
Jersey boasted of one estate with a private deer park; and in Penn¬ 
sylvania there was an impassable gulf between the rich landholders 
and merchants of the southeast, and the poor Ulster Scotch frontiers¬ 
men. In Virginia great tobacco plantations of from 1,000 to 50,000 
acres lined the James, Potomac, Rappahannock, and other rivers. 

10 N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 1876-77, II, 68 ff. 


THE COLONIES BEFORE THEIR UNION 


13 


The large-scale employment of slaves under the supervision of alert 
overseers made holdings that had cost their original owners almost 
nothing productive in favorable years of £10,000, £20,000, and some¬ 
times even more. The rich planters were country gentlemen recog¬ 
nizably akin to the Squire Western of Fielding’s England, though 
with more pride and intelligence. They lived with profusion but 
usually without taste, they were often self-indulgent, and they 
treated the common folk with condescension. Some scholars were 
found among them, and some large libraries—the Byrds of Westover 
owned 4,000 volumes; but what redeemed them as a group was the 
shrewd and deep interest they took in public affairs. It was this 
interest which made them merit their long control of the Legisla¬ 
ture. A similar position was taken in South Carolina by the 
wealthy rice and indigo planters of the lowlands, and the Charleston 
merchants. The affluent South Carolinians recognized the value of 
education. In the quarter century 1759-1786 more South Carolinians 
were admitted to the Inns of Court in London than citizens of any 
other Colony—46 in all, against 20 from Virginia. 

Throughout British America the governments were governments 
by parties, and the Legislatures came to be run with nearly as 
much wire-pulling, log-rolling, party bossism, and political bargain¬ 
ing as would exist in American communities of the same size today. 
Adam Smith spoke in his “Wealth of Nations” (1776) of “the little 
prizes which are to be found in what may be called the paltry rabble 
of colonial faction,” and these little prizes were zealously sought. 
In Massachusetts before 1765 there was formed the “Junto,” led by 
Samuel Adams, and including James Otis, John Hancock, Thomas 
Cushing, Joseph Hawley, and Samuel Dexter. It held the Assembly- 
men almost in the palm of its hand. Beyond doubt it was modeled 
after the famous Caucus Club which, controlling the affairs of Boston 
in late Colonial times, gave America one of its familiar political 
terms. This Caucus Club, according to John Adams, met in the 
garret of Adjutant Tom Dawson, a large room, where they smoked, 
drank flip, and made their choice of the men to be elected selectmen, 
collectors, assessors, and legislators. 11 In New Hampshire a compact 
group of squires year after year drafted the legislative program. 
The Virginia House of Burgesses was controlled for many years by a 
ring of Tidewater representatives of wealth, family, and brains, 

11 Cf. Gordon, “Hist, of the . . . Independence of the U. S.” (1788), I, 365. 


14 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the Speaker-Treasurer being its head in Governor Dinwiddie’s time. 
In all three of these Provinces the lower house was large. 

Governor Clinton, of New York, complained to the Board of Trade 
in 1747 concerning the “constant meeting of a committee of the 
Council and Assembly, who never make any report of their pro¬ 
ceedings, tho’ the resolutions of both Council and Assembly were 
directed by them.” A little later, Lieutenant-Governor Colden de¬ 
scribed a combination of lawyers which had been formed to domi¬ 
nate the Assembly, though only a few Assemblymen belonged to it. 
Thus “they rule the House of Assembly in all matters of importance,” 
he observed. “The greatest numbers of the Assembly being common 
farmers who know little either of men or things are easily deluded 
and seduced. By this association, united in interest and family con¬ 
nections with the proprietors of the great tracts [of rich land], 
a domination of lawyers was found in this Province, which for 
some years past has been too strong for the executive powers of 
government.” In North Carolina, again, not long before the Revo¬ 
lution there existed a junto composed of four members of the 
Council and a little knot of the House, with one of the Treasurers 
for leader. This Treasurer, John Starkey, was paymaster of the 
Assembly, and Governor Arthur Dobbs wrote that he used his 
powers in such a manner that “all the low members who want a 
supply follow him like chickens, so that he sways the House against 
the most sensible members in it.” Even in half-formed Georgia, 
which was only a row of dotted settlements along the coast and 
three rivers, such a directing -committee or ring was formed, the 
most prominent member being the Speaker, Noble Wimberly Jones. 12 

12 Clinton’s fullest description of the New York caucus is in “Docs. Rel. Col Hist 
N. Y.,” VI, 354 ; for Colden’s words, see Idem., VII, 796; for Dobbs’s, “Col.’ Rees! 
N. Ca.,” V, 948-49. 


CHAPTER TWO 


BEGINNINGS OF THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 

During the sessions of the Continental Congress in June, 1775, it 
was considered expedient to issue a declaration of the causes for 
taking up arms. Jefferson prepared a draft, but it met with such 
vehement objections from John Dickinson that the latter was re¬ 
quested to write a declaration suiting his own cautious views. He 
did so, and Congress, actuated by a desire not to move too fast for 
any considerable group of members, approved it almost without 
change. When this was done, Dickinson expressed his joy, adding: 
“There is but one word, Mr. President, in the paper which I dis¬ 
approve, and that is the word ‘Congress.’ ” 1 Thereupon Benjamin 
Harrison lifted his tall, spare figure and replied: “There is but one 
word in the paper, Mr. President, of which I approve, and that is the 
word ‘Congress.’ ” The division between the forces of radicalism and 
conservatism which this incident illustrates was as wide as the Ameri¬ 
can Colonies in the years 1774-76. In every Province the patriot 
party was split into two wings, one wishing at first to make an un¬ 
qualified, defiant assertion of American rights, and later to hasten the 
assertion of independence; the other eager at first to emphasize the 
hope for reconciliation with Great Britain, and later to delay the total 
break with the mother country. To the radical side belonged the 
Adamses, George Clinton, Joseph Reed, Patrick Henry, and Christo¬ 
pher Gadsden; to the conservative side equally sterling Americans 
like James Bowdoin, John Jay, Robert Morris, Edmund Pendleton, 
and John Rutledge. 

Another division between somewhat different groups of radicals 
and conservatives was sharply defined upon domestic issues. When 
the time came to frame State constitutions, the conservatives in gen¬ 
eral wished for balanced and rather aristocratic forms; the radicals 
for a highly popular form—one in which the legislature, directly 
representing the people, would dominate the executive and judicial 

1 Jefferson’s Writings, Memorial Ed., I, 17. 

15 


16 THE AMERICAN STATES 

branches, while property qualifications for the ballot would be low 
or absent. The radicals aligned themselves against special social, 
economic, and religious privilege. They attacked the church estab¬ 
lishment, primogeniture and entail, methods of taxation which 
favored the rich, and the discrimination against new settlements in 
the apportionment of representation. But the conservatives were 
usually ready to support the old order. In the South, they staunchly 
defended the Anglican Establishment, the preservation of ancestral 
estates intact, and the favored position of the lowland planters in the 
legislature. A struggle between radicals and conservatives upon 
imperial questions was thus rapidly followed by another upon State 
questions. 


I. Grievances of Individual Colonies 

As every Colony was more or less distinctive in its government, 
so nearly every Colony found some distinctive fault with British 
authority, and cherished its hope of distinctive reform. The greater 
discontents were those common to all the provinces. Franklin 
expressed them in his “Causes of the American Discontents,” and the 
American leaders in 1774-76 enumerated them in a series of noble 
state papers. From the time the colonists lost their first fear of the 
forest and the savage the central grievance was simply, as the Massa¬ 
chusetts legislators told Cromwell’s Parliament, that they wanted to 
live “under the government of a governor and magistrates of their 
own choosing, and laws of their own making.” This goal was attained 
only by Connecticut and Rhode Island. The aspiration produced 
friction so early that the Puritans were thought by John Locke, and 
the Virginians by Stuart observers, to be planning independence. 
But all the Colonies, save autonomous Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
and the two weakest Provinces, Delaware and Georgia, had separate 
reasons for restiveness. We can hardly understand the spirit with 
which men of every section sprang forward in 1775 unless we take 
account of such facts as the irritability of New Hampshire under the 
arbitrary management of the Crown lands, the resentment of South 
Carolina when the Crown denied the right of its house to send money 
to John Wilkes, and the anger of Maryland over rapacious fee 
charges. 

In some Colonies the special irritations were so numerous that one 
no sooner lost its force than another appeared. This was notably 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 17 

true of the fastest-growing Southern commonwealth. North Caro¬ 
lina before the Revolution had received successive waves of immi¬ 
grants from the north and the seacoast, until it had become one of the 
most populous Colonies. These rugged, individualistic small farmers 
had distinctive economic interests, and were not men to let their 
liberties be abridged. Just before the war the little capital of New 
Bern witnessed four marked disputes, involving finances, boundaries, 
representation, and the courts. 

The most important of these controversies arose from the deter¬ 
mination of the royal authorities to extricate North Carolina from 
her financial embarrassments by heavy taxation. The population 
was poor; it groaned under the costs of the French war, the campaign 
of 1771 to suppress the western malcontents or Regulators, and the 
redemption of former issues of paper money. Under pressure from 
the farmers, the legislature tried to stop the collection of certain 
onerous taxes. The Governor, a stiff, unimaginative, conscientious 
officer named Josiah Martin, disallowed the bill, the legislators tried 
to override him, and their quarrel continued till the very beginning 
of the Revolution, involving repeated prorogations of the Assembly. 
As for the boundary, the Crown had fixed a disputed line with South 
Carolina in a position unfavorable to the claims of the northern 
Colony, and had instructed Governor Martin to mark it. The 
Assembly, unwilling to lose a rich territory, open to land-hungry 
North Carolinians, declined to pay the surveyors a shilling; and 
Martin, to the general resentment, appointed his own commissioners 
to run the line. 

This controversy had no sooner been thus summarily disposed of 
than there arose a graver dispute concerning the courts. The As¬ 
sembly of 1773, aware that the law which established the judicial 
system was to expire that session, framed an enactment to replace it, 
and inserted a clause which made the North Carolina property of 
persons who had never resided in the Colony attachable for debt. 
That is, they asserted the right called “foreign attachment. ,, Eng¬ 
lishmen objected to such a clause for several reasons, the chief of 
which was that it gave to American claimants a prior lien upon the 
American property of foreign debtors who owed money both in 
England and America. Martin was bound by his instructions to 
refuse assent to the law as framed, a deadlock ensued, and the greater 
part of the court system went out of existence. For a full year the 


18 THE AMERICAN STATES 

Colony was left dangerously unprotected against lawless men. At the 
same time, the legislature evinced its jealousy for its own rights by 
halting what it regarded as a step towards packing the lower house. 
Governor Martin, pleased by the hospitality offered him at Tarboro, 
a Tar River hamlet of some importance as a centre of export for 
tobacco and porl^, chartered it as a borough town, with a special seat 
in the legislature. The Assembly refused to admit the member 
elected, on the ground that Tarboro did not have the population 
required by law for borough towns. 2 

We are not here concerned with the merits of these controversies; 
the important fact is that within a few years North Carolina was 
disturbed by four separate collisions. And beneath these disputes 
smouldered on the old persistent quarrel regarding the Governor’s 
powers over the legislature, a spluttering little fire ever ready to help 
light other blazes. The colonists wanted an Assembly chosen at fixed 
intervals, not at the arbitrary will of the Governor; a body able to 
sit at stated periods, free from the fear of being prorogued as soon 
as it met. In 1773 the legislature discussed a bill to establish tri¬ 
ennial elections for the Assemblies, though everybody knew that 
such a bill would be vetoed. “Such was the ardent and unanimous 
desire of the people of the Province,” we are told by a historian 
acquainted with the leading figures of the day, that these bills were 
frequently drafted although “they stood no chance of becoming a 
law.” 3 Martin took pains to conciliate the Regulators, with such 
effect that, smarting with resentment against the lowlanders, they 
rallied to his side ; but the rest of the Province remained hostile. 

The Colonies had many and protean money quarrels with the 
Crown authorities in the period immediately preceding the Revolu¬ 
tion. We may instance only the most picturesque, furnished by South 
Carolina—a dispute so debatable that the two chief historians of 
the State have disagreed upon it. 4 The South Carolina Whigs became 
passionately interested in the crusade of John Wilkes, the English 
agitator, for freedom of speech and elections. When Wilkes was 
prosecuted for his writings in the 45th issue of the North Briton, 
they made as much of that magic numeral as the English Whigs, 
drinking 45 toasts at tables bearing 45 lights and 45 bowls. Like 
most Americans, they believed the cause of Whiggism identical in 

2 Martin’s “North Carolina,” II, 306. 

* Jones, “Defence Rev. Hist. N. C.,” 80. 

4 See McCrady, “S. C. Under the Royal Government,” 663, 690 ff.; D. D. Wallace 
“Life of Henry Laurens,” ch. 13. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 19 


England and America. When in 1769, after Wilkes was barred from 
Parliament, Chatham took sides with him, and an English society 
was formed to aid him in his fight, South Carolina flew to his aid. 
The Commons House impulsively ordered £1,500 to be sent to 
London for Wilkes and his friends. This was a slap in the face of 
the Crown; it was also a slap at the Governor and the dependents 
who formed the Council, since they insisted that their approval was 
necessary for any vote of money. The British Attorney-General 
ruled that the House could not legally appropriate money from the 
treasury without the consent of the Governor and upper chamber, 
and that its act had been unconstitutional; a doctrine which the 
House flatly rejected, declaring that it had the right to grant money 
for any purpose and at any time. 5 

This quarrel became ugly, and inflamed public sentiment in a half 
dozen directions. It involved the colonial treasurers, whom the 
House ordered to jail when they refused to pay out another sum, this 
time for silk manufacture, without the consent of Governor and 
Council. It involved the tax bills, for the angry Council refused to 
approve any taxes levied for the replacement of the money sent to 
Wilkes. It involved the press, which took sides. Governor Mon¬ 
tagu, a young English lord, fatuously called a session of the legisla¬ 
ture at an inconvenient, unhealthy spot, Beaufort, hoping the 
stubborn Charleston members would not attend. 6 He little knew the 
temper of the patrician merchants and planters, and on the very first 
day he was greeted by the fullest house in the history of the Colony. 
Thereafter he was an exile in a hostile land, resisted politically and 
ignored socially by the once affable society of Charleston. Thus 
South Carolina, entering the lists in behalf of a man who, however 
disreputable personally t was called by Gladstone one of the great 
champions of British liberty, received a preliminary training for the 
Revolution. 

But the Wilkes affair was by no means South Carolina's sole 
dispute with the crown authorities. In the uplands a population of 
small farmers, similar to that across the line in North Carolina, and 
now constituting a majority of the white population, had long 
demanded the establishment of new parishes to give them local 
government and legislative representation. When the legislature 

6 Smith, “S. C. as a Royal Province,” 373 - 4 - 

• D. D. Wallace, “Const. Hist. S. C., 7 3 - 


20 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


finally created two such parishes, the King’s ministers decided in 
1770 to veto the act. 7 Both the uplands and lowlands were still 
further irritated by another royal negative, that of a bill to emit 
£106,500 in paper currency to exchange for a former issue; and there 
were still other disagreements. 

Disputes over the position of the judges and courts were all too 
common. New York preceded North Carolina, just as North Caro¬ 
lina preceded Massachusetts, in contesting this issue with the Crown 
authorities. Cadwallader Colden—“Old Silverlocks”—a Scotch-born 
physician whose achievements as a student of Indian life, natural 
science, and philosophy made him one of the worthiest intellectual 
figures of the Colonies, a man Benjamin Franklin was proud to 
know, was acting-Governor of New York during most of the troubled 
sixties. We soon find the patriots levelling against him three posi¬ 
tive indictments: that he had refused to grant the judges commis¬ 
sions during good behavior, that he had supported the claim of 
litigants in civil cases to an appeal from the Province courts to the 
Governor or King in Council, and that he had approved the Stamp 
Act. 

Colden indeed insisted, in accordance with British instructions, 
upon limiting the freedom of the courts. He maintained that the 
right of appeal to the Governor or King in Council was requisite for 
the preservation of justice, since the courts were in a confused state, 
and subject to pressure from the wealthy landholders—both reasons 
possessing real force. The Assembly resolved that the practise was 
a dangerous innovation, tending to promote litigation, and subject 
the people to arbitrary power; but the Crown authorities stood firm. 
So, too, the royal officers maintained their right to give the judges 
commissions revocable at will. It became impossible to obtain a 
chief justice except by going to Massachusetts for a favorite of 
Thomas Pownall’s, and popular discontent with the dependent char¬ 
acter of the judiciary remained high till the Revolution. 8 

Ecclesiastical questions were a source of constant friction, for large 
bodies of the colonists entertained an inveterate suspicion of the 
Anglican church, particularly where it was the legal establishment. 
Archbishop Thomas Seeker of Canterbury made a proposal in the 
sixties regarding King’s College in New York which some men 

T McCrady, “S. C. Under the Royal Government,” 640; Wallace, “Henry Laurens,” 
171. 

8 See Colls. N. Y. Hist. Soc., 1877 (Colden “Letter-Books,” II), 452-467 et passim. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 21 


regarded as a project for maintaining an Anglican school at public 
expense; and as late as the end of 1774, John Adams tells us, the 
radicals and conservatives in the Province were known respectively 
as the Presbyterian and Episcopalian parties. 9 When John Cam, 
the head of William and Mary College, tried to give impetus to an 
old scheme for the establishment of an Anglican bishopric in the 
Colonies, not only the Virginia dissenters, but a majority of Episco¬ 
palians as well, opposed the episcopate as likely to afford support 
for undesirable Crown measures. 10 This was despite the obvious 
arguments, from a religious standpoint, for resident bishops. 

Two disputes over the maintenance of the Anglican clergy, in 
Virginia and Maryland, were particularly noteworthy in that they 
helped to bring to the front a pair of the ablest Revolutionary lead¬ 
ers, Patrick Henry and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. In Virginia 
the controversy, the famous “Parson’s Cause,” arose during the last 
French war, when the price of tobacco soared sharply. With it soared 
the salaries of the clergy, who were each paid eight tons of tobacco 
annually. Feeling that the ministers received too much, the legisla¬ 
ture ordered them remunerated in cash at the rate of twopence a 
pound of tobacco, or much less than the market price. The ministers 
protested, the Crown vetoed the law, and several parsons began suing 
for the arrears of pay. In one case in Hanover County the parish¬ 
ioners retained as counsel young Patrick Henry, who, though an An¬ 
glican, had a Presbyterian mother, and sympathized with the poor 
and independent-spirited upland farmers. He made such an effective 
attack on the Established clergy, many of whom were too nearly 
worthless to deserve a salary at all, that the jury—swayed by popular 
feeling and the young lawyer’s eloquence—gave the parson suing only 
a penny in damages. 11 In Maryland also the Anglican clergy were 
grossly overpaid. In 1767 the annual income in sixteen parishes ex¬ 
ceeded £200 each, while in All Saints Parish of Frederick County it 
was £450, and increasing at the rate of £50 a year. We are told that 
the place-hunting minister who wrung this fat living out of the hard¬ 
working settlers had to carry a pistol into his pulpit. Members of 
the Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, and other churches naturally 
resented a law which compelled them to contribute so heavily to the 

B John Adams, “Works,” II, 345 iff. 5 Jones, “Hist N Y.” I, 12 ff.; Docs. Rel. 
Col Hist. N. Y., VI, 913; Flick’s “Loyahsm in N. Y., 18. 

10 Eckenrode. “The Revolution in Va., 3 ° p T . , , ., T 0 a 

11 Eckenrode, Idem, 12 ff.; Tyler’s “Henry, ch. 4; Hening s Statutes, VI, 82 ff., 

568 ff. 


22 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Episcopalian faith. The issue, however, did not become acute 
except as part of a larger controversy. 

It happened in Maryland that the exorbitant and often wholly 
illegal fees levied for the payment of government officers had become 
very oppressive. Some officers, such as the judges of the land court, 
could become rich in a few years. The assembly wanted the fees 
reduced, and when the act of 1763, which regulated their amount, 
expired in 1770, it took a firm stand for revision, pointing out that 
the annual income from the greater offices had increased by more 
than one-half in twenty-three years, that charges were made where 
no service had been performed, and that for some services there was 
a double charge. Governor Robert Eden thereupon prorogued the 
legislature and fixed the amount of the fees by proclamation. His 
act was regarded as a gross usurpation, for in effect it was an 
arbitrary exercise of the power of levying taxes. To add to the 
discontent, the lapse of the fee law brought into force an old 
enactment for the payment of Anglican ministers, under which they 
became entitled not to thirty pounds of tobacco*per poll, as in recent 
years, but to forty pounds. The result was a popular uprising against 
both the Governor and the clergy. 

The election of May, 1773, one of the most heated contests in 
Maryland history, turned upon this question of the fees. From the 
beginning of the year a vigorous debate was carried on in the 
Maryland Gazette of Annapolis, the most important newspaper. On 
the Governor’s side “Antilion,” later identified as Daniel Dulany, 
the Attorney-General and leading lawyer, stepped forward to defend 
the proclamation, and presented his case with argumentative skill. 
But he met more than his match in “The First Citizen,” soon known 
to be Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a wealthy young Catholic who 
had enjoyed an excellent education in France and England. Carroll’s 
letters continued till midsummer. Meanwhile, the legislative elec¬ 
tions ended in a complete triumph for the anti-proclamation party, 
whose victory was jubilantly celebrated. In Annapolis the procla¬ 
mation, carried in a coffin labelled “The Child of Folly and Oppres¬ 
sion,” was interred under the gallows; in Baltimore the proclamation 
was hanged in effigy and buried, while Carroll received votes of 
thanks from all over the Province. Governor Eden was able to 
stand firm and the fees remained in force. But the Assembly re¬ 
solved that their collection was arbitrary, unconstitutional, and 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 23 

oppressive, while in a final Gazette article three of the leading 
patriots, Thomas Johnson, William Paca, and Samuel Chase, solemnly 
asserted that ultimate sovereignty lay in the freemen of Maryland, 
not in the Crown. 

The ebullition of indignation which, as every schoolboy knows, 
occurred in Massachusetts when the British troops were quartered 
upon Boston, had been preceded by similar outbursts in other 
Colonies. In New York, during 1765 the British Government asked 
the legislature to provide quarters, firewood, bedding, provender, 
soap, and candles for as many British troops as might be stationed 
in the Colony. The Assembly declined, replying that the several 
counties made provision for the troops barracked within them, and 
that if any general supply were required for soldiery on the march, 
the legislature would consider the question of payment after the 
costs had been incurred. Under the insistence of the London authori¬ 
ties, the demand was twice repeated, and twice refused. Parliament 
finally forbade the New York legislature to pass any more laws until 
it had made provision for the troops, and for two years, 1767-69, 
legislation was suspended while the Assembly stood fast. At the 
end of that period a new election gave control of the Assembly to 
the moderate party, which acceded to the requirement. 12 Popular 
anger rose high when £2,000 was appropriated in September, 1769, 
for the troops, and it was intensified by the Assembly’s prosecution 
of Alexander McDougall for libelling it. In the same year Governor 
Montagu asked the South Carolina house to supply fuel and other 
barrack necessities to the royal troops in Charleston, and met with a 
sharp rebuff. Here the dispute had a happier ending, for the forces 
were soon sent to Florida. 

We have touched upon only some of the more typical disputes in 
individual Colonies. Many other causes of ill-feeling between the 
colonists and Crown, operative in single Provinces or groups of 
Provinces, but not in British America generally, might be enumer¬ 
ated. One lay in the appetite for land exhibited by some royal 
officers. We have mentioned the deep antagonism to the Proprie¬ 
tary’s land policy manifested in Pennsylvania in the fifties. A differ¬ 
ent manifestation of this greed was presented in New Hampshire. 
Governor Benning Wentworth, a Harvard graduate and typical co¬ 
lonial aristocrat, granted himself more than 100,000 acres in the 

12 Roberts’s “New York/’ II, ch. 22 . 


24 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


course of a long administration which closed in 1765. His tracts 
were scattered all over the Colony, so that no matter which section 
grew fastest, the old Crown Governor would be enriched. After his 
death his nephew and successor, John Wentworth, a handsome, 
shrewd, polished young man, was suspected of planning to lay 
hands on this property, which had gone to Benning Wentworth’s 
widow. Nothing that we know of John Wentworth’s character, save 
his desire to pose as a man of wealth in a luxurious manor house, 
justifies this suspicion; and the Crown authorities finally dismissed 
the charge. But the memory of Benning Wentworth’s land-grabbing 
endured till the eve of the Revolution. 13 

Much might be said, also, of the perennial friction in the South, 
especially Virginia, between the planters and their British creditors, 
a friction which grew acute in years of poor crops and low prices. 
The hard-pressed planters tended to look upon the English merchants 
and factors as extortionate plunderers. Several Colonies, notably the 
Carolinas, felt acutely the British law of 1764 forbidding the issue 
of legal-tender paper money. In other Colonies a decided contribu¬ 
tion was made to the Revolutionary spirit by the impatience with 
which various groups regarded the obstacles laid by the Crown in 
the path of westward expansion. These obstacles began with the 
royal proclamation of 1763, which converted most of the trans- 
Allegheny territory into an Indian reservation, in which further 
grants of land were forbidden. This was a temporary administrative 
measure, intended to control, not to prevent, emigration westward, 
but it angered men interested in the irresistible westward movement. 
The climax was reached in the Quebec Act of 1774, extending the 
boundaries of that Canadian Province southwest to the Ohio and 
Mississippi, thus transgressing the charter claims of many Colonies 
and again thwarting numerous schemes for land development. 

The principal causes of the Revolution were of course the general 
causes, affecting the whole continent. Differences between the 
character of the American and British peoples, and between their 
political and social ideas, were of the utmost importance. There 
were radical defects in the entire plan of colonial administration. 
The economic factors were numerous. Historians still dispute the 
exact role played by the mercantile system, which, beginning with 

M N. H. State Papers, XVIII, 616-624; Mayo’s “John Wentworth,” ch. 7 Com¬ 
plaints regarding the Governor’s land policy continued till in 1773 the British govern 
ment forbade grants without the King’s express permission. Prov. Papers VIII 320 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 25 

the first Navigation Act under Cromwell, was embodied in more 
than a hundred Parliamentary statutes, designed to give effect to the 
principle that trade within the empire should benefit the citizens 
thereof, not foreigners. Some of the acts injured the colonists, some 
benefited them. But inevitable collisions grew out of the British 
effort, after the close of the last French war, to stop smuggling and 
establish an effective customs service—an effort tantamount to the 
reenactment of a series of navigation and tariff laws which had been 
allowed to fall into harmless desuetude. Colden wrote from New 
York in the fall of 1765 that “the merchants in this place think they 
have a right to every freedom of trade which the subjects of Great 
Britain enjoy.” 14 Then came the attempt to collect new taxes, 
direct and indirect, from the colonists. Throughout America the 
effect of the Sugar Act of 1764, which placed a tariff on various 
commodities imported by the colonies, the Stamp Act, the subse¬ 
quent Townshend duties, the stiffer customs collections, and the tea 
duty of 1773, was to unite the substantial merchant classes with 
the unpropertied radicals in opposition to the Crown. 

We cannot deny the paramount importance of the general causes. 
We cannot forget that in the years 1773-75 the other Colonies, 
whatever their special complaints, more and more gave them a secon¬ 
dary place as they watched events in Massachusetts. Pennsylvania a 
decade before had been wrought to a high pitch of feeling by the 
“twenty-six aggrievances” which it used as an argument for the 
abolition of the proprietorship. But it was not these grievances 
which impelled John Dickinson, a successful lawyer trained in the 
London Inns of Court, to write his “Letters From a Farmer” attack¬ 
ing British policy—it was Townshend’s tariff, and the opposition to 
this tariff came to a head most dramatically in Boston. The coercive 
enactments by which Parliament punished the Boston tea-party 
centred all eyes upon Massachusetts. Nevertheless, the special 
grievances of the several Colonies, as distinguished from their com¬ 
mon grievances, may easily be underrated. Each Province entered 
the Revolution as an individual community, with its distinct hopes 
for change and reform as well as its share in the general American 
aspirations. 

In the very multiplicity of the disputes between the British Govern¬ 
ment and the Colonies we see an evidence of the fact that funda- 

14 He added: “But the inhabitants of the country are absolutely free of the seditious 
spirit which rages in this town.” Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 62. 


26 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


mentally two ideas, two entire tendencies, were in conflict. The 
Crown administration, perceiving after the Seven Years’ War that 
imperial polity was crude and rudimentary, and that the empire had 
no constitution worthy of the name to knit it together, thought that 
the remedy lay in a firmer central authority. The Colonies, awaken¬ 
ing at the same time to their wealth, strength, and energy, felt a new 
self-reliance, and concluded that they ought to enjoy a greater free¬ 
dom. The American idea of a colony was in the main the old 
Greek idea—a plantation which in due time should grow into 
almost complete independence; the British held rather to the Roman 
conception, that of a dependent part of a cohesive empire. Very 
little large statesmanship on either side was addressed to the prob¬ 
lem of a proper imperial organization. It was not until too late that 
England’s rulers were willing to listen to Chatham’s proposal for a 
compact delimiting and guaranteeing the rights both of the Colonies 
and Parliament, a proposal the spirit of which, at least, was sound. 
In Great Britain statesmanship was confined to the opposition; in 
America circumstances forced it into nationalist, not imperial, 
channels. 

II. Organization of Provincial Congresses 

In all the non-autonomous Colonies except New York the begin¬ 
nings of the Revolution were first discerned in a clash between the 
legislature and the royal officers; in New York the legislature was on 
the royal side. In a few Colonies, most notably Maryland and South 
Carolina, the upper chamber was loyalist, but in general the popular 
branch at least was thoroughly Whig. These Assemblies were effec¬ 
tive instruments up to a certain point—well organized, experienced 
in struggles with the Crown, and able to maintain a tight grip on 
the treasury. Their limitations were that the Governor could usually 
dissolve or prorogue them when he liked, that he could sometimes 
manipulate a minority, subservient to himself and the Crown, for 
his own ends, that they could seldom keep any secrets from him, that 
they could not move with dispatch, and that they were hampered by 
a sense of their oaths and legal position. The early history of the 
Revolution is largely a spectacle of these half-fettered bodies strug¬ 
gling to effect what they could, until most of them were pushed out 
of the way by a new set of patriot agencies, openly defiant of the 
Crown. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 2 j 

In Virginia the fencing between the House and Governor entered 
upon a sharp phase at an earlier date than in the other important 
Provinces. In 1769 the Burgesses passed resolutions protesting 
against the taxation then just planned by the British Ministry, 
whereupon Lord Botetourt promptly dissolved them. Outwardly, 
the members accepted dissolution. In reality, they simply proceeded 
to a private house, chose as chairman Speaker Peyton Randolph, a 
rich planter, as cautious as he was patriotic, and agreed that public- 
spirited men would no longer buy imported slaves, wines, or British 
manufactures. Washington, who was a Burgess, moved the agree¬ 
ment, but its author was the scholarly planter of Gunston Hall, 
George Mason, who was not a member of the House. This agree¬ 
ment was broadened the following year into an “association.’’ The 
principal political leaders, including Randolph, Washington, Jeffer¬ 
son, R. H. Lee, and Richard Bland, signed it, and the important 
merchants formed an organization at Williamsburg to enforce it. A 
committee of 125, including merchants as well as planters, was 
appointed to watch over both its observance and the general political 
situation. 15 

A similar flare-up occurred early in 1773. The Burgesses, sitting 
in February, received from Massachusetts a statement of colonial 
grievances, including the recent efforts to tax the colonies, the act of 
Parliament for sending certain classes of accused persons to England 
for trial, the movement to establish bishoprics in America, and the 
restraints upon manufactures. Thereupon, led by a radical group 
including Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and R. H. Lee, they appointed 
a committee of intercolonial correspondence, and wrote to the other 
Provinces asking for the establishment of similar bodies. 16 This was 
one of the most important of the early steps of the Revolution. It 
meant that the Continent would be knit closely together, while each 
Province would have a watchful junta at work between legislative 
sessions. The Governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the Assembly, 
but too late. 

The final crisis commenced a year later. In May, 1774, the news 
of the Boston Port Act arrived, electrifying Virginia as it did all the 
other Colonies. The radicals, under Jefferson, Henry, and Lee, were 
again ready for action. These men, with four or five others, held a 

15 Eckenrode, “The Revolution in Va.,” 29, 30. 

w Journal, House of Burgesses, 1773-76, P- 12. For a defence of Virginias title to 
this honor, see Va Hist. Colls., n. s., I, 19- R- H. Lee was author of the proposal; 
Letters, I, 29. See also J. M. Leake, “Thg Va. Committee System,” 60, 61. 


28 THE AMERICAN STATES 

conference in the Council chamber, where they had the benefit of a 
small library, and decided that to arouse the people to the emergency, 
a day of fasting and prayer should be proclaimed. 17 There had been 
no such solemnity since the Seven Years’ War had opened in gloom. 
There is something incongruous in the spectacle of these sons of a 
Cavalier Colony, the Lees being members of one of the proudest 
Cavalier families, rummaging over the precedents of the Puritans 
under Cromwell. But they did so, and induced the Burgesses to 
appoint June i as a fast day. The expected result occurred. Lord 
Dunmore again dismissed them. 18 This time the Burgesses, 89 
strong, marched down the long street to the Apollo Room of the 
Raleigh Tavern, for a generation the scene of balls, banquets, and 
political gatherings. 19 Putting Speaker Randolph in the chair, they 
not only drew up a new agreement for the non-importation of East 
India goods, but they took another important step in the leadership 
of the Colonies—they instructed their corresponding committee to 
propose an annual Continental Congress. The Connecticut Legis¬ 
lature had suggested the same measure three days earlier, but without 
communicating it directly to the other Colonies. 

Thus far the Legislature had been able to serve the Colony well, 
despite the fact that Jefferson thought the older members not “up 
to the point of forwardness and zeal which the times required.” But 
it was not in a position to meet when it wished, and even in these 
preliminary measures it had been hampered by a sense on the part of 
some members that they were acting illegally. At the Raleigh 
Tavern R. H. Lee had wished his companions to take additional 
steps, but “a distinction was set up between their then state and 
when they were a House of Burgesses,” as he disgustedly wrote 
Samuel Adams. 20 However, the logical new move was now near 
at hand. Most of the Burgesses had just left town when on a quiet 
Sunday afternoon, May 29, a messenger from the north rode into 
Williamsburg with a packet of letters from Boston and other colonial 
capitals. Peyton Randolph at once sent out a call for all the 
members within reach, assembled twenty-five the next day, and took 

17 “The lead in the House on these subjects being no longer left to the old members,” 
Jefferson explains; “Writings,” Memorial Ed., I, 9. 

18 Dunmore had hitherto evinced a disposition to get on amicably with the House, 
and no quarrels had been serious. See P. S. Flippin, “Royal Govt, in Va.,” 144; 
Journal, House of Burgesses, 1773-76, Introduction. 

19 “Memoirs of Elkanah Watson,” 35, describe Williamsburg in 1777; a town of 320 
houses, mostly wooden, on one street three quarters of a mile long, with the Capitol 
at one end and William and Mary College at another. 

20 Letters, I, 111 if. See Schlesinger, “Colonial Merchants and the Amer. Rev.,” 362 ff. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 29 

up the plea of the Bostonians for a stoppage of all trade with 
England. It was decided to convoke the members of the late 
House in Williamsburg on August 1, and with this decision the 
first Provincial Convention or revolutionary legislature was born. 2 . 1 

Massachusetts exhibits the same cycle of legislative insubordina¬ 
tion and executive chastisement, ending in the creation of a wholly 
new body; but its several phases were more acute because Massa¬ 
chusetts was the storm-center of the continent. In the Bay Colony 
by 1770, both houses were firmly Whig, while both were supported 
by energetic local organizations—the alert town-meetings—for which 
Virginia had no real counterpart. On the other hand, the royal 
governor of Massachusetts was a man of much greater ability than 
the Scotch earl, Lord Dunmore, who sat in the Governor’s Palace 
at Williamsburg. Thomas Hutchinson, who entered office in 1770, 
was a member of one of the best Boston families, a descendant of 
Anne Hutchinson, and a graduate of Harvard. He had shown high 
qualities as a legislator, helping to put the Colony’s finances on a 
sound basis, and he had been for a time an impartial chief justice. 
Like Cadwallader Colden, he was a genuine scholar, as he showed 
in his history of Massachusetts Bay; and like Colden again, he was 
an ingrained conservative, who disliked all radical leaders and 
radical tendencies. 22 But despite his ability, activity, and public 
spirit, Hutchinson was quite overmatched as a political tactician by 
Samuel Adams and other Whig chieftains. 

The most vigorous assertion of the popular liberties in Massa¬ 
chusetts came from the Boston town meeting. The year 1728 is 
a milestone in Massachusetts history because it witnessed the earliest 
such meeting to take a strong stand against the Governor. “The 
chief cause of the mobbish turn of a town inhabited by twenty 
thousand persons,” wrote Governor William Shirley some years later, 
“is its constitution, by which the management of it is devolved on 
the populace, assembled in their town meetings.” 23 The workmen 
had a self-assertiveness that was rude and turbulent, but healthy. 
In the sixties the gatherings of the citizens began to play a prominent 

?i See C R. Lingley, “Transition in Va.,” 48; Calendar Va. State Papers, VIII, 52. 
During the summer of 1774 the Whig leaders all over Virginia called county meetings 
at which committees were chosen to enforce the non-importation agreement. Washing¬ 
ton presided June 18 over one in Fairfax County. All over the Province the voters 
also approved the plan for the attendance of their late Burgesses at the Williamsburg 
Convention on August 1. __ . <<T , tt. 

22 See James K. Hosmer, “Life of Thomas Hutchinson”; John Fiske Essays His¬ 
torical and Literary”; M. C. Tyler, “Literary History of the American Revolution. 

2 * Cf. the declaration of a Tory, “Sagittarius,” that the town meeting was the 
hotbed of sedition”; Frothingham, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1863. 


30 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


part in stiffening the Assembly’s stand against the Crown. When 
the enforcement of the Townshend Act was impending in October, 
1768, the people voted in town meeting to dispense with many 
imported articles of British manufacture, and appointed committees 
to obtain signatures to the agreement. 

Samuel Adams, though a poor man—he was an unsuccessful 
maltster—laid aside all personal business, and thenceforth devoted 
himself wholly to public affairs. Under his leadership, the town 
never looked back. When in September, 1769, a large consignment 
of goods arrived at Boston in charge of a factor, they were ordered 
to be locked up, and the keys given to a committee of patriots. 
If Boston had been governed by a mayor and council, the radicals 
would have found it much harder to throw into the revolutionary 
movement, but in the town-meetings the ship mechanics and shop¬ 
keepers could carry all before them. One day Adams might be 
presiding over a gathering at Faneuil Hall, and the next be in his 
seat in the General Court, so that the two bodies had in him a 
satisfactory link. 24 All over the Province towns little and big tended 
to catch the spirit of Boston. 

Many acts of the Boston town-meeting were highly dramatic. 
We have a number of such grim stories as that of the Scotch mer¬ 
chant who, brought before 2,000 earnest men in Faneuil Hall, and 
stubbornly refusing to accede to the non-importation agreement, 
was panic-stricken when Samuel Adams rose and moved that the 
crowd resolve itself into a committee of the whole to call upon him 
and urge him to yield. Reverting to his native accent, the culprit 
hastily stammered, “Mr. Moderator, I agr-r-ree, I agr-r-ee.” On 
the afternoon following the Boston Massacre (March 6, 1770), the 
town meeting was attended by every man who could leave his 
employment, while many citizens had flocked in from neighboring 
towns. When a committee which had called on Governor Hutchin¬ 
son to demand the immediate removal of the troops returned to 
Old South Church to report, Samuel Adams whispered right and 
left to those densely crowded at the door: “Both regiments or none! 
Both regiments or none!” Hutchinson’s reply, that he would send 
one regiment to the Castle in the harbor, but keep the other in the 
city, was no sooner read than the shout, “Both regiments or none!” 
filled the street, and to this demand the Governor had to yield. 

24 Hosmer’s “Samuel Adams,” ch. io. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 31 


But the most significant action of the town meeting was not 
dramatic at all. It was so quiet that few could have thought of it in 
its true aspect—the raising of the curtain on the first act of the 
Revolution. During the summer of 1772 the House learned with 
alarm that the Crown had granted the Governor a permanent salary, 
and resolved that such a provision, independent of the grants of 
the General Court, was an infraction of the charter rights of the 
Colony. 25 Then came the news that the royal government had gone 
further and had offered the judges of the Superior Court independent 
salaries, to attach them to it rather than the legislature. A town 
meeting held on November 2 angrily took the step which “included 
the whole Revolution.” At the instance of Samuel Adams, a com¬ 
mittee of correspondence, with twenty-one members, was appointed 
to communicate with other towns upon the maintenance of “the 
rights of the colonists, and of this Province in particular.” 26 

The significance of the corresponding committee in Boston was 
that it led at once to the organization of all the patriot forces of 
the commonwealth. It held its first meeting, with the brilliant but 
already partly insane James Otis as chairman, on November 3, 1772, 
and drew up the report upon British encroachments which we have 
already mentioned. This paper, sent in the closing days of the year 
to all Massachusetts towns, found a ready response from the marsh 
flats of Cape Cod to the hills of Berkshire. Almost every town 
formed its own corresponding committee, so that the Province, 
humming like a hive, was soon a closely-bound unit. The smaller 
communities naturally looked up to Boston. There were to be found 
the ablest men of the Colony—the Adamses, Otis, James Bowdoin, 
John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, and Thomas Cushing—to whom 
outlying leaders like James Warren of Plymouth and Joseph Hawley 
of Northampton deferred; there were the citizens boldest in opposing 
the Crown. By Samuel Adams’s proposal the people had been 
brought into a well-marshalled array. In each town the local com¬ 
mittees could educate the public in the principles of the radicals, 
enforce the trade agreement, and push forward defensive measures. 


2* Governor Hutchinson first gave definite announcement on June 13, 1772, that the 
King had provided for his full support. The House vigorously protested, declaring 
that it alone had a right to determine his salary. Hutchinson, waxing indignant, there- 
1,non accused the legislators of trying “to alter the constitutional dependence of this 
Colony upon the Cro g wn and upon the Supreme Legislative authority of Great Britain. 
His reply to the House, July 14, 1772, set forth the historical and constitutional argu¬ 
ments for the Crown’s action. See his “History of Massachusetts Bay, III, 357 ff• 

» For a study of all Revolutionary committees of correspondence see E. D. Collins s 
essay in Annual Report Amer. Hist. Assn., 1901, I, 243 ff. 


32 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


John Adams wrote that the communities “have been wonderfully 
enlightened and animated. They are united in sentiment, and their 
opposition to unconstitutional measures of government is become 
systematical.” 

This work of organization, a Tory remarked a few years later, 
was “the source of the rebellion. I saw the small seed when it was 
implanted; it was as a grain of mustard. I have watched the plant 
until it has become a great tree.” 27 

Meanwhile, the Provincial legislators had observed the action of 
the towns with sympathy. When news reached Boston early in 
1773 that the Virginia Burgesses had proposed a system of inter¬ 
colonial communication through committees of correspondence, it 
was hailed with satisfaction. Here was an opportunity to do for 
all the Provinces what had been done for all the Massachusetts 
towns. The General Court accordingly established at its spring 
session a corresponding committee, with Cushing as chairman and 
Samuel Adams as the leading spirit. The Crown authorities were 
exceedingly hostile. They considered the step, Governor Hutchin¬ 
son says, “a most glaring attempt to alter the constitution of the 
Colonies by assuming to one branch of the legislature the powers of 
the whole; by continuing, by delegation, the powers of government 
after the authority from which the delegation had derived had 
expired; and by uniting in one body a number of bodies which, by 
their constitutions, were intended to be kept separate and uncon¬ 
nected.” That is, although they might not strongly have opposed a 
correspondence with other Colonies while the legislature sat, they 
objected to a permanent body carrying on communication between 
sessions, and exercising important powers. The house made a 
defiant reply to Hutchinson’s objections, pointing out that American 
rights were constantly being attacked in the intervals when Assem¬ 
blies stood prorogued or adjourned. 28 

During this session, the House also resorted to stern measures 
to try to keep the judiciary dependent on itself rather than on the 
Crown. The justices had accepted only half of the grants made 
them by the Assembly, from which it was inferred that they intended 
thereafter to take the newly-offered Crown salaries. The House 
resolved that any such action would convict them of hostility to 
the Constitution and friendship to tyranny, and it demanded of 

27 Massachusettensis, ed. 1819, 159 ff. 

28 Hutchinson’s “History,” III, 398-99. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 33 


them, under threat of impeachment, an immediate and explicit 
declaration of intention. Hutchinson thereupon carried out a 
previously announced determination of proroguing the House. Its 
demeanor and spirit, he tells us, had become far more defiant in 
the course of the preceding five years: 29 

That which used to be called the “court house” or “town house” had acquired the 
name of the “state house”—“the house of representatives of Massachusetts Bay” had 
assumed the name of “his majesty’s commons”;—“the debates of the assembly” are 
styled “parliamentary debates”;—“acts of Parliament,” “acts of the British Parlia¬ 
ment”;—“the Province laws,” “the laws of the land”;—“the charter,” a grant from 
royal grace or favour, is styled the “compact,” and now “impeach” is used for 
“complain,” and the “house of representatives” are made analogous to the “commons,” 
and the “council” to the “lords,” to decide in cases of high crimes and mis¬ 
demeanours, and, upon the same reason, in cases of high treason. Another instance 
of the same nature was attempted in this session. The year of the King’s reign, 
and the royal style, had always been prefixed to the laws of the Province in Latin, 
as they are to acts of Parliament; and in this style the royal authority over the whole 
dominion is expressed; but in all the bills prepared in the house this session, the prefix 
was altered from the old form in Latin, to these English words, “In the thirteenth 
year of King George the third.” 


The next session of the General Court, in January, 1774, naturally 
produced quarrel after quarrel with the Governor. It occurred just 
after the Tea-Party, which had caused much new excitement; it 
occurred also after Samuel Adams had published in the Boston 
Gazette a series of essays in which he went to extreme lengths, 
proposing that a Continental Congress be assembled, that it draw 
up a bill of rights, and that it send an ambassador to the British 
Court to act for the united Colonies . 30 Both the dispute over the 
committee of correspondence and that over the judges were renewed. 
Four of the magistrates, under popular pressure, refused the Crown’s 
offer, but Chief Justice Peter Oliver took a different stand, declaring 
that he had sat upon the bench for seventeen years, that his salary 
had always been insufficient, and that now he intended to accept 
the King’s bounty. The House at once undertook to make good 
its threat by impeaching him before the Governor and Council; 
and when Hutchinson tried to block this procedure by absenting 


*9 jd em hi, 4I3 . Hutchinson on Feb. 4, 1773 , had confirmed the fears of the 
House by stating that a Crown order for the allowance of salaries to the judges of the 
Superior Court had actually been made. This news, as Hutchinson later wrote in his 
“Historv” (III 387) was “resented with much warmth by the legislators. The 
House at once expressed its hope that no judge who had a due regard for f independent 
justice, or his own character, would choose to be placed under such an undue bias 
as acceptance of the Crown’s money would imply. After some delay Hutchinson 
replied defiantly. The House then passed a set of resolutions, while it and the Council 
together appealed, but in vain, to Lord Dartmouth for a recall of the warrants for 
the judges’ pay. “Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, 365-67, 397-98- 
so Adams waxed bold in these letters. Answering in October the question how the 
colonists should “force their oppressors to proper terms he said^that the only method 
had often been suggested: it was to “form an independent state, an American com¬ 
monwealth.” Boston Gazette, September 27 October 11, 1773- Other radicals might 
have used such an expression to alarm the Crown agents; Adams used it sincerely. 


34 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


himself from the Council meeting, the indomitable Samuel Adams, 
who was with the House committee, told Bowdoin, the presiding 
officer of the upper chamber, that the Governor was presumptively 
present, and entered the fact of the impeachment in the House 
journals. Before any further steps could be taken, the Governor 
prorogued the General Court by messenger. 

Meanwhile, the news of the Tea-Party had reached England, and 
before the General Court met again in its regular May session the 
Ministry had brought into Parliament a series of enactments to 
punish the stiff-necked Americans. They were passed rapidly and 
by large majorities. The general view in Parliament was that of 
General Thomas Gage, soon to be military governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts—that the colonists would be “lyons, whilst we are lambs; 
but, if we take the resolute part, they will undoubtedly prove very 
meek.” 31 One bill closed the port of Boston, which Lord North 
said had been a place of riot and confusion for seven years. Another, 
much less censurable, allowed a transfer of the trials of any accused 
royal officials out of the Colonies in which they were accused. 
A third was the Quartering Act. But the most important was the 
bill to alter the Massachusetts Constitution, embodying a direct 
attack upon both the legislature and the sleepless town meetings 
which stood behind it. “At present, their Assembly,” argued Lord 
George Germain, then as later doing all that folly could suggest to 
rive the Empire asunder, “is a downright clog upon all the proceed¬ 
ings of the Governor.” 32 Under the terms of the measure, the 
Crown, not the General Court, was thereafter to choose the Council 
or upper house, while town meetings were not to be held, except for 
the annual elections, without the Governor’s consent. The passage 
of this law committed Parliament to the principle that the Constitu¬ 
tion of the Colony was not a compact, unalterable except by consent 
of both parties, but a document which the British government 
could alter at will. Nine tenths of the people of Massachusetts 
would not admit such a principle for a moment. 

The people were equally determined not to allow the upper house 
to be prostituted to the Crown. For long years it had once been 
a tool of the royal authorities, and at the time of the Stamp Act 
a very dangerous one. But since James Bowdoin, a patriotic mer¬ 
chant, had become its leader, it had acted as a valuable ally of the 

A. M. Marks, “England and America 1763-83,” I, 308. 

Idem, I, 309. Ex-Governor Pownall made a warm protest against the bill. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 35 

representatives, and they meant it to remain so. When the list of 
new royal appointees, or mandamus Councilors, was sent out to 
Hutchinson, the people showed a passionate determination never 
to let them take office. 33 Actually, the Governor’s authority had 
now declined to a point where it possessed no real effectiveness. 
“All legislative, as well as executive, power was gone, and the danger 
of revolt was daily increasing,” wrote Hutchinson later of this period 
when the news of the punitive acts arrived. 34 “The inhabitants, 
in many parts of the Province, were learning the use of firearms, 
but not under the officers of the regiment to which they belonged. 
They were forming themselves into companies for military exercise, 
under officers of their own choosing.” The real authority now lay 
in the local committees of correspondence and the town meetings. 
Exhausted by his trials, Hutchinson resigned as soon as a successor 
could be found; and on April 2 Thomas Gage, the commander-in¬ 
chief in America, was nominated to supersede him, while to empha¬ 
size the military character of the new administration, four regiments 
were ordered to Boston. 

By a final dramatic stroke the legislature promptly showed the 
new Governor how unmanageable it was. On May 26, a fortnight 
after word of the final passage of the Port Act had kindled the people 
to unprecedented anger, the General Court convened in its usual 
spring session, only to be prorogued by Gage to meet at Salem early 
in June. When it reopened, the public anger was still intense and 
Samuel Adams and his radical co-workers were in full control. Both 
chambers adopted indignant addresses to the Governor. All the 
while the leaders were mindful of the preparations they must make 
for the Continental Congress proposed by Virginia. Adams watched 
his chance; he gathered his followers in hand; and on June 17 he had 
the doors of the House suddenly locked. Resolves were brought in 
appointing five delegates to the Congress. A Tory escaped on a 
pretext, and bore the news to Gage, who at once hurried the secre¬ 
tary of the Colony over to the House to dissolve it. He arrived 
panting for breath, but the patriots would not open the door. While 
he contented himself with reading the Governor’s message to a few 
members and idlers gathered on the doorstep, the House imper¬ 
turbably went on with its business. To pay the expense of the 
delegates, £500 was voted, and since no money could be taken from 

33 Hutchinson’s “History,” III, 156; 4 Amer. Archives, I, 741. 

s* Hutchinson’s “History,” III, 455 - 


36 THE AMERICAN STATES 

the treasury without the Governor’s consent, this sum was assessed 
upon the towns in proportion to their last tax list. Then the 
members went home. 35 

It was only a short step now to a revolutionary legislature and 
the complete paralysis of the old agencies of government. The 
news of the Port Bill and of the alteration of the Charter galvanized 
the town committees all over the Province into a rapid movement 
towards a more inclusive and energetic organization for defense. 
County and district units began to form. On May 12 the commit¬ 
tees of Boston and eight neighboring towns met and drew up reso¬ 
lutions intended to inspire popular resistance. Far to the west, 
on July 6 sixty delegates from towns in Berkshire County convened 
at Stockbridge. On August 9, more than half a hundred delegates 
from a score of towns and districts in Worcester County met at a 
Worcester inn, and later that month another convention of 150 
assembled there. At the same time an equal number of Middlesex 
County delegates gathered at Concord. In September a half-dozen 
other counties held meetings. From these bodies there came a series 
of resolutions attacking the punitive acts of Parliament and virtually 
declaring that they must not come into effect. The resolves of the 
Suffolk County convention were of special importance because they 
were subsequently endorsed by the Continental Congress. They 
summed up a plan of resistance, declaring bluntly that the Parlia¬ 
mentary acts should be disobeyed, the payment of taxes stopped, 
and the new judiciary disregarded. 36 

While this was going on, the events following Gage’s dismissal of 
the General Court showed that the old government had utterly 
broken down. The Governor had a heavy pretorian guard of 
veterans of famous European battles at his command; six regiments 
lay at Boston, and one was camped at his residence in Salem. But 
they were useless, and in flat defiance of a proclamation which he 
issued, a town meeting gathered at Salem within the very sound 
of their drums. Popular threats caused the effort to organize a 

36 John Adams, “Works,” I, 144-45. 

88 The proceedings of these bodies are in the “Journals of the Provincial Congress,” 
601-660. The first Worcester meeting adopted resolutions denying the jurisdiction of 
Parliament, attacking its measures, and called for a non-consumption agreement. The 
second Worcester gathering declared for the free convocation of town meetings and 
proposed that town taxes should be collected but withheld from the Provincial Treas¬ 
ury. It also recommended that fit persons be sent to a Provincial Convention “to 
resume our original mode of government ... or some other which may appear to 
them best calculated to regain and secure our violated rights.” The Middlesex dele¬ 
gates also asserted the free right to call town meetings and voted in favor of sending 
delegates to a Provincial Congress. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 37 

Council by royal appointment to fail, and even had it succeeded, 
the House would never have acted with that body. More threats 
forced the Lieutenant-Governor to resign; and Gage wrote despair¬ 
ingly to Lord Dartmouth that “we shall shortly be without law or 
civil power.” 37 When on September 1 the Governor issued writs 
for the election of a House to meet at Salem on October 8, every 
leader saw that the meeting would lead to another quarrel and 
another dissolution. 

Already a Provincial Convention had been suggested from several 
quarters, and the people now made use of the idea. It is the 
universal opinion, the Boston committee wrote to outlying com¬ 
munities, “that ’tis best to send as many representatives as the 
Charter and Province laws allow and then to instruct not to dissolve 
themselves, but to form a provincial congress there to consult and 
execute measures that concern the internal government of the 
Province.” 38 When the towns elected the Assemblymen, with a 
uniformity that points to a few directing minds, they therefore 
empowered them, if a break with Gage occurred, to resolve them¬ 
selves into an irregular legislature. A number of towns also chose 
delegates to act in the irregular body alone. While the Province 
thus trembled on the brink of complete governmental revolt, the 
perplexed Gage on the late date of September 28 withdrew his call 
for the General Court. 

But his hope thus to delay the movement was in vain. The 
Continental Congress had met September 5, with the eyes of all 
Americans upon it, and a Provincial agency to cooperate with it 
was imperatively needed. On October 5, 1774, ninety representa¬ 
tives gathered at Salem just as if the Governor’s call were still valid. 
They courteously awaited the appearance of Gage, and finally came 
to a temporary organization, with the rich merchant, John Hancock, 
whom Samuel Adams had brought into the radical camp some 
years before, as chairman. Two days later they adopted ominous 
resolves, treating the Governor with a new harshness. Recalling 
the explicit provisions of the charter safeguarding their legislative 
rights, they denounced his annulment of the writs of election as not 
merely insolent, but unconstitutional, inasmuch as his power to 
prorogue a General Court was not valid until the body actually met. 

87 Parliamentary History, XVIII, 96 ff. . 

88 Cushing “Transition from Provincial to Commonwealth Government in Massa¬ 
chusetts,” 114. There had been a Provincial Congress of 96 towns and districts in 
1768, when the British troops had been sent to Boston. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


38 

Then they voted to resolve themselves into a Provincial Congress, 
to determine on such measures as would promote the true interests 
of the King and Colony in this dangerous juncture. 39 By an 
orderly process, a body of both great legislative and executive 
powers had been created. 

So it was in all parts of America. During the spring and summer 
of 1773 the atmosphere of the continent had been one of growing 
tension. Before midsummer five legislatures, those of New England 
and South Carolina, had replied with enthusiasm to the proposal 
of the Virginia Burgesses for uniting the Colonies by corresponding 
committees. In the autumn the news that the Tea Act was to 
be carried into effect transferred at one stroke the resentment of 
all Americans from local issues and fixed it upon the great imperial 
issue of taxation. Popular indignation was carried at a bound to 
a pitch higher than in Stamp Act times. “I have not known so 
sudden and so universal an appearance of discontent,” wrote an ob¬ 
server in Philadelphia on October 25. 40 Angry mass-meetings were 
held in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, and the 
destruction of the tea in the first-named city was greeted with 
exultation by the Whigs throughout the country. During the fall 
and winter all the other Colonies save Pennsylvania chose corre¬ 
sponding committees, and at the same time similar bodies were 
organized in many towns. It was while this violent agitation was 
still unabated that in the spring of 1774 intelligence of the coercive 
measures directed against Massachusetts reached the Colonies, acting 
as a final precipitant of radical determination. The immediate 
results were the birth of the Continental Congress and the general 
emergence of revolutionary legislatures. The latter process has 
particular interest for us. 

In New Hampshire repeated prorogations forced the popular 
leaders to exchange the regular Assembly for a revolutionary body 
several months before Massachusetts. The patriots here possessed 
a leader with some of Samuel Adams’s boldness and alertness in 
their Speaker, who bore the same name as the Governor, John 
Wentworth. The Governor, always a man of energy and decision, 41 

89 “Journals of the Provincial Congress,” 6. 

40 Frothingham, “Rise of the Republic,” 299. 

41 Governor John Wentworth had to play much the same role as Hutchinson. He 
was American-born and was graduated at Harvard with John Adams—when Adams 
xT aS President of the United States, Wentworth was royal governor of Nova Scotia. 
He had a tact which made him popular in spite of his aristocratic tastes genuine 
sagacity, and force of character. Though still a young man, he had caused the Prov¬ 
ince to be surveyed, had laid it out into five counties, which he named after as many 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 39 

tried throughout 1773 to make a stand against the mounting Whig 
spirit, which found expression not only in the appointment of a 
Provincial committee of correspondence, but in vigorous town 
meetings. He was able to prevent a duplication of the Boston 
tea-party when a ship reached Portsmouth with the hated com¬ 
modity, 42 but could do nothing with the Assembly. Accordingly 
he dismissed it in March, 1774, when it was about to discuss some 
letters from other Colonies, in the hope, as he wrote Lord Dart¬ 
mouth, that a few weeks would bring it to a more moderate temper. 

However, when a fresh Assembly met just a month later he found 
that it included new men of ability to fortify its radical temper— 
men like Meshech Weare, Josiah Bartlett, and his long-time enemy, 
Woodbury Langdon. The legislators again misbehaved so badly, 
in his view, that as soon as they had finished the urgent Provincial 
business he once more dismissed them. It was a futile act, for 
the popular leaders, now aroused by the news of Lord North’s 
program in Parliament, repeated the procedure of the Virginia 
Burgesses. They agreed to meet in their usual chamber for an 
extra-legal session, and had gathered in their seats for business 
when the angry Governor, supported by the sheriff, arrived and 
ordered them to disperse. Admitting that they had no right to sit 
in a government building, they simply marched over to the leading 
inn of Portsmouth, ordered a good dinner, and over their roast 
beef decided to summon the towns to elect a Provincial Congress. 
Eighty-five members duly appeared at Exeter on July 21, only one 
Congress having met earlier—that of Maryland. 43 

The majority of the Colonies early in 1774 needed only an 
electric shock to fuse them into a patriotic whole, and that shock, j 
the passage of the Boston Port Bill, ran from north to south in 
May and early June. The news reached Boston on May 10, New 
York on May 12. Paul Revere rode into Philadelphia with full 
details on May 19, carrying letters to Thomas Mifflin and Joseph 
Reed, the one a wealthy Quaker merchant, the other the foremost 

English noblemen, had undertaken to provide better roads, and—with results unex¬ 
pected by him—had improved the military strength of the Colony. He wished to 
please his own people and counselled the Crown authorities to be moderate. When 
driven into exile, he 'wrote: “I will not complain, because it^would be a poignant 
censure on a people I love and forgive.” Mayo s Wentworth, 157- 

42 On the day of the Boston tea-party, a Portsmouth mass-meeting sent resolutions 

to all the towns denouncing the British taxes and expounding the principles which the 
British government had transgressed. Prov. Papers, VII, 333-345 cf. Adams s 
“Annals of Portsmouth,” 239-40. „ , , , , „ 

43 Prov Papers VII 352-400 passim. Each town was asked to select one or more 
persons”'for the Provincial Congress. For its proceedings, see Prov. Papers, VII, 

407 ff. 


40 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

lawyer of the Province. All three hurried out to “Fairhill,” the 
home of John Dickinson, a rich retired lawyer, though still in his 
forties, whom the Province counted its most distinguished citizen 
after Franklin. His “Letters From a Farmer,” attacking the 
Townshend Act, had won him a continental reputation. 

The city had already been aroused by the news, and other Whig 
leaders, such as Charles Thomson, a brilliant young scholar and 
missionary to the Indians, soon to be noted as the secretary to 
Congress, joined in taking appropriate steps. Two representative 
mass-meetings were held in Philadelphia, the second attended by 
8,000 people; 44 a city committee of correspondence was created, 
keeping in close touch with county committees; and the counties 
were asked to send delegates to a Provincial conference on July 15 
in the building now known as Independence Hall—the first step 
toward a regularly organized Provincial Congress. This body met 
on the date set, and proved to be a gathering of seventy-five mem¬ 
bers, representing all eleven counties, and able to speak with 
authority. It asserted the rights of America, pledged the coopera¬ 
tion of Pennsylvania with the other Colonies, and requested the 
Assembly to appoint delegates to a Continental Congress—which 
the Assembly did. Pennsylvania, because of its wealth and of the 
intrenched position of the peace-loving Quakers and loyalist Angli¬ 
cans, was one of the most conservative of the Provinces, and it 
waited for Congress to act upon commercial non-intercourse. 45 

In Maryland the news of the Port Act burst like a thunderclap 
in an atmosphere already made sultry by the quarrel over the 
executive regulation of fees and the excitement arising from the 
Tea Act. Observers wrote that they heard “strange language every 
day,” and that a popular majority seemed ripe “for any measure 
that will tend to the preservation of what they call their natural 

44 The first mass-meeting, held at the City Tavern, was addressed by Dickinson, 
Reed, and Charles Thomson, and Thomson spoke so impetuously that he fainted. 
See Scharf and Westcott, “Memorial Hist. Philadelphia,” I, 289-90; Stille’s “Dickin¬ 
son,” I, 107-8. 

40 Even if the Assembly could have been called at once, it would have been difficult 
to make it a revolutionary agency. Conservative by tradition, elected by conservative 
voters who had to be worth fifty pounds each, with the radical new counties of the 
west grossly under-represented, and responsive to the conservative lawyer, Joseph 
Galloway, its speaker, it was certain to hang back. The creation of the Philadelphia 
committee of correspondence was a step of almost as great significance for Pennsyl¬ 
vania as the appointment of the Boston committee had been for Massachusetts. The 
Whig leaders had for some time encouraged the formation of a system of county 
committees, and they now obtained a committee-in-chief. They hoped that as events 
wrought upon the public mind, the Provincial Conference or Convention would exert 
a growing influence, and, without jostling the Assembly out of place, lead the Colony 
forward. As Thomson said, the Province would move slowly but surely to maintain 
its rights. But the radical extremists did not want to wait for the Assembly. Thom¬ 
son Papers, N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 1878, 280-81. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 41 

liberty.” Governor Sir Robert Eden was as helpless in the face 
of the situation as Wentworth was in New Hampshire. Personally 
he was well liked by the Marylanders. He was a man of moderate 
views and winning bonhomie, with just the touch of the aristocratic 
dignity required in a planter society; moreover, he was noted for 
his hospitality, and tradition states that Washington more than once 
rode over from Mount Vernon to dine and spend the evening 
with him. 

Now he could be but little more than a passive spectator of the 
storm. Mass-meetings were held in Baltimore and Annapolis on 
May 25, to choose committees of correspondence. Annapolis 
declared for ending all trade with England, and for stopping inter¬ 
course with any Colony which did not cooperate to obtain a repeal 
of the Port Act. It was Baltimore, however, the rising trade center 
of the Province, which set in motion the machinery of revolutionary 
organization. At a second meeting, May 31, her people proposed 
a Continental agreement on trade, and called for a general congress 
of county deputies at Annapolis. Other counties immediately 
assented, and ninety-two delegates organized as the first Provincial 
Convention, under Matthew Tilghman, in the aristocratic little 
capital on the Severn, June 22, 1774. 40 

In the Carolinas the story of the revolutionary legislatures is 
particularly interesting. Governor Martin, after renewed quarrels 
with the North Carolina house over taxation and the court bill, had 
summarily dismissed it at the end of March, 1774, and let it be 
known that he would issue no call for a new body, though urgent 
business remained unperformed. At this John Harvey, the Speaker, 
flamed up with the assertion, “Then the people will convene them¬ 
selves!” Early in April Harvey conferred with three Whig leaders, 
Willie Jones of Halifax, Samuel Johnston of Edenton, and Colonel 
Edward Buncombe of Tyrrel County. He was in “a very violent 
mood,” Johnston reported, and declared that he was ready to issue 
handbills over his own name for an independent convention. 47 

The news from Boston kindled an indignation that gave Harvey 
and his associates their opportunity. The people of Cape Fear 
sent a shipload of provisions to the Bostonians. William Hooper, 
whose New England birth and Harvard training made him feel the 

48 See Scharf’s “Maryland,” II, 146, for the letter of a Baltimore committee to the 
Bostonians; see also J. A. Silver, “Provincial Government of Md., 1 774 - 77 ,” Johns 
Hopkins University Studies, Series 13, * T o. 10. 

47 N. C, Col. Rees., I, Introduction. 


42 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


more strongly, but who was always a moderate leader, hostile to 
reckless measures, wrote that the Colonies were striding fast toward 
independence, and would ere long build an empire on the ruins 
of Great Britain. 48 Most North Carolinians had so little sentimental 
regard for the British connection that nearly fifteen years earlier 
Governor Arthur Dobbs had spoken of “the rising spirit of inde¬ 
pendence stealing into this Colony.” During June there came news 
that one Province after another was choosing delegates to a Conti¬ 
nental Congress. Finally, Hooper, Richard Caswell, Harvey, and 
others made arrangements for calling a Provincial Convention in 
a more dignified manner than by handbills; this was by a circular 
letter sent out July 21 from a general meeting in Wilmington district, 
asking all the counties to send deputies. 49 The body duly met on 
August 25 at New Bern, under the very eyes of the Governor. 

In South Carolina we find a conservatism which closely resembled 
that of the lowland planters of Virginia, but was decidedly more 
intense. The Province was governed by an aristocracy of planters 
and merchants which had felt strong social and intellectual bonds 
with Great Britain. The Rutledges, Laurenses, Bees, Pinckneys, 
and Draytons looked to London much as did the wealthy county 
families of Norfolk, or cultured merchants of Bristol and Chester. 
They regarded England as “home”; they thought a season at the 
center of empire an incomparable diversion; they felt that their 
sons were not well educated until they had finished at an English 
university or the inns of court; and they had a fervent admiration 
for Chatham, Burke, Wilkes, and the other great English Whigs. 
England was their chief market for cotton and indigo, and from 
England they bought books, clothing, furniture, pictures, and the 
other elegances of life. 50 

Conjoined with this love o± England was a settled aversion to 
disorder. The Charleston leaders permitted nothing like the exploits 
of the Mohawks in Boston or the Sons of Liberty in New York. 
“It may be asserted with the greatest truth,” one of them wrote 
after the Revolution, “that no kingly-ruled Province in America had 
less of mobbing in it, than this; though we had many disputes of 
great consequence with all our last British governors, yet not the 

E. W. Sikes, “Transition of N. C.,” Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series 
XVI, Nos. 10, 11. 

40 N. C. Col. Rees. IX, 1016-18. See also Schlesinger, op. cit., 370. 

50 McCrady, passim; Wallace’s “Laurens,” chs. 2, 3, 14, 15; 'Ravenel’s “Charleston” 
chs. 9, 11. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 43 

least symptom of mobbing appeared; not even when, to try their 
tempers and bring them to improper compliances, the Assembly 
was most haughtily and provokingly ordered to sit at Port Royal, 
and that too at the most unhealthy season of the year.” As men 
of property, whose prosperity depended upon order, the planters 
and merchants resisted a complete revolution so long as they could 
do so consistently with their principles. When Christopher Gadsden 
later produced a copy of Paine’s “Common Sense” in Charleston, 
most of his fellow-legislators were horror-stricken; and John 
Rutledge said that he would ride night and day to Philadelphia 
if thereby he could avert a final rupture with England. 

The revolution in aristocratic South Carolina found its beginnings 
in city mass-meetings, just as in democratic Massachusetts it orig¬ 
inated in the town meetings. The first one, called in the closing 
days of 1773 when the ship London arrived at Charleston with 
nearly three hundred chests of tea, showed the ability of the con¬ 
servative leaders to control the situation and prevent violence. They 
kept the extremists in hand until the collector of the port seized 
the cargo for debt, stored it in safe vaults, and thus cut the Gordian 
knot. Several other meetings followed, until on January 20, 1774, 
the “general meeting” became an established institution. That is, 
a committee of substantial, cool-headed citizens was placed in 
charge, and soon after was empowered to call it at any time. The 
ruling order knew not only that it would be useful in safe Whig 
hands, but that it would be dangerous in the hands of the ignorant 
retailers, mechanics, and waterfront workers. New England travel¬ 
ers before the Revolution tell us that the laboring groups of Charles¬ 
ton, Philadelphia, and New York were inferior to those of Boston, 
and there is reason to believe the workmen of Charleston the most 
irresponsible of all. The established leaders, thus keeping the 
“general meeting” under control, called one at the City Tavern 
when news of the Port Bill arrived, and used it to take the next 
step in the Revolution—that is, to send out a call for a general 
Provincial gathering. This conference, for such it was, met July 6 
in Charleston with 104 official members. 51 

One Province in which the organization of the new revolutionary 

51 It was attended by delegates from all but a few localities. For the early Revolu¬ 
tionary movement in South Carolina see, besides McCrady’s, Drayton’s, and Ram¬ 
say’s histories Wallace’s “Arrival of the Tea and Origin of the Extra-Legal Organs 
of Revolution,” Pubs, of Vanderbilt Southern Hist. Society, No. 4 (1900). 


44 


THE AMERICAN ST A TES 


machinery followed a remarkably methodical course was New 
Jersey; and, we may add, in which it was remarkably rapid, con¬ 
sidering all the obstacles. These obstacles were varied. Governor 
William Franklin, the wayward but able son whom Dr. Franklin 
later disinherited, was liked by all classes and parties. The Province 
had few commercial interests, and little share in the commercial 
grievances of New York and Philadelphia. The people were 
thoroughly provincial—“they are a very rustical people, and 
deficient in learning,” Governor Belcher had correctly written some 
twenty years earlier—while in race and creed they lacked unity. 
There were Dutch inhabitants sprinkled thickly through the beau¬ 
tiful region of hills and streams in the northeast, along the Hudson 
and Kill van Kull; there were Palatinate Germans along the upper 
Delaware; enterprising New England farmers had begun to migrate 
to some fertile spots; there were a few French Huguenots and 
Scotch, and of course many English. A majority of the Episco¬ 
palians were staunch Tories, while the Quakers whose prim meeting¬ 
houses were found everywhere from Burlington down the Delaware 
to its mouth manifested a conservative, peace-seeking spirit. How¬ 
ever, the loyalists of the Colony were scattered, and therefore at a 
disadvantage as compared with the loyalists of New York and 
Philadelphia, whose strength was concentrated in the two cities 
which were both capital and metropolis, and in the surrounding 
countrysides. The patriotic leaders could not force the pace too 
fast, but they did force it steadily. 

The eastern section of New Jersey made New York city its 
market and in politics and manners followed its guidance, while 
the southwestern section, with its Quaker communities, was dis¬ 
tinctly under Philadelphia’s influence. Naturally, it is the former 
that we find leading the revolutionary movement. The London 
ship that brought word to New York of the passage of the Boston 
Port Act aroused an outburst of indignation among the radicals 
which had an immediate effect also across the Hudson. The first 
committee of correspondence was appointed by a popular meeting 
at Lower Freehold, a town near the future battlefield of Monmouth, 
on June 6. A more important gathering, representing all Essex 
County, which lies within sight of the towers of New York, was 
held at Newark five days later, where it advanced the idea that 
each county should choose a committee, and that county repre- 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO ST A TES 45 

sentatives should meet in a Provincial conference at the earliest 
feasible date. The response was gratifying—Governor Franklin 
wrote to England in alarm that all the leading men approved the 
proposal. One after another, in June and July, the people of the 
various counties gathered at their courthouses, and took the desired 
action by appointing committeemen to attend. Thus the movement 
bore fruit in a Provincial conference that sat briefly at New 
Brunswick on July 21, 1774, only six days after the similar 
Pennsylvania meeting. 52 

That Essex County should furnish the leaders of the conference 
was another evidence of New York’s influence. They were Stephen 
Crane, the chairman, William Livingston, soon to be Governor, 
and Isaac Ogden and Elias Boudinot, all living within a short ride 
of the Hudson ferry. All could have communicated constantly with 
New York radicals like John Morin Scott and George Clinton, while 
Livingston had long lived in New York, and was in touch with 
not only his influential family there, but with his son-in-law, 
John Jay. 

In three other Colonies the crisis of May and June, 1774, saw 
the tiller of government seized firmly by the patriots without the 
necessity of establishing revolutionary legislatures; for in these 
three—Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware—the Whigs were 
in full control of the ordinary mechanism of administration, and no 
royal official was able to interfere. Connecticut boasted in Jonathan 
Trumbull the only Colonial Governor who stood staunchly by the 
American cause. This sterling merchant-statesman, born in Con¬ 
necticut and educated at Harvard, had served a half dozen years 
before the first bloodshed of the Revolution. He had been one of 
the leaders of the movement against the Stamp Act in Connecticut, 
and as a member of the Council had .refused to witness Governor 
Fitch’s acceptance of the prescribed oath that he would execute all 
the clauses of the hateful enactment. Under Governor Trumbull, 
the non-importation agreement of 1769-70 had been better observed 
than in some other northern Provinces. 53 

Connecticut was one of the first Colonies to appoint a committee 
of correspondence, and to see that the Tea Act raised anew the 

62 N. Y. Journal, June 30, 1774; N. J. Archives, Series I, vol. 29, 409-32. This 
gathering was called “the committee of 7 2 ”> L. Q. C. Elmer, Const, and Govt, of 
N. J.,” ch. 2. As Elmer says, it exercised no legislative powers. Governor Franklin s 
comments on its proceedings are given in Colls. N. J. Hist. Soc., V, 438 ff. 

03 Johnston’s “Connecticut,” 288. 


46 THE AMERICAN ST A TES 

whole question of imperial taxation. The spring of 1774 found her 
legislature passing resolutions declaratory of colonial rights, author¬ 
izing the dispatch of delegates to the Continental Congress, and 
taking the first steps to organize the militia for emergencies. 54 
It found the towns resenting Lord North’s attacks upon Boston and 
Massachusetts in the spirit of hardy little republics. They were 
condemning the Ministry in formal resolves, appointing local com¬ 
mittees of safety, and buying arms and munitions. In Farmington 
the Port Bill was burnt with fitting ceremony; in Norwich a gen¬ 
erous gift to Boston was collected, consisting of grain, money, and 
a flock of nearly 400 sheep; in Windham, emblems of mourning 
marked the day the Port Act became effective, and the same week 
a Boston Tory named Green, traveling there on business, was 
mobbed. 

Such was public sentiment that in various Connecticut localities 
where Crown sympathizers were tarred and feathered it was impos¬ 
sible for the magistrates to enforce the laws against assault. The 
fall meeting of the General Assembly took the foremost place on 
the continent in the preparations it made for war. Militia officers 
were appointed where needed, men who absented themselves from 
muster were fined, and the towns were required to provide a double 
quantity of powder, balls, and flint. A general muster was ordered 
for the end of November, and during the winter drill went 
steadily on. 55 Connecticut was preparing to furnish far more than 
her share of the American forces. 

Rhode Island’s record during 1774 was equally good, for the 
popularly-elected Governor, the aged Joseph Wanton, as yet showed 
no lack of firmness. Early in the year the leading towns appointed 
committees of correspondence, and as soon as they heard of the 
passage of the Port Act, Providence and Newport instructed their 
Deputies to do their utmost to promote a Continental Congress. 
The House during the middle of June declared for a firm and 
inviolate union of all Colonies, in council and measures, and 
appointed two delegates to the Continental Congress. Aid was 
promised the people of Massachusetts, and the Providence Light 
Infantry was established. Other steps for arming the Colony fol¬ 
lowed that fall, companies of militia being authorized in a number 
of localities, and the same preliminary measures for defense taken 

64 Public Records of Conn., XIV, 264-75. 

“The legislature sat October 13-NovemDer 4, 1774; Public Records, XIV, 325 ft. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 47 

as in Connecticut. 56 These autonomous Provinces, being free 
agents, and closely united by blood and sentiment with Massa¬ 
chusetts, had every reason to keep in the van of the revolutionary 
movement, and they did so. As for Delaware, it was of course not 
autonomous. But there was no Governor resident in the Colony, 
which made the progress of the revolutionary movement much 
easier; while the ability of the Proprietary to interfere with the 
legislature was strictly limited—it had the right to meet on a certain 
day annually, and could not be prorogued or dissolved. When news 
of the punitive British legislation of the spring of 1774 reached 
Delaware, mass-meetings were held in all three counties. The 
people knew that Governor Penn would not call the Assembly before 
the date to which it stood adjourned, so they simply requested 
Caesar Rodney, the speaker, to do so. The legislature, or, if we 
deny it that name, a convention of legislators, met at New Castle 
on August i. 57 

Thus far nothing has been said of two Provinces, New York and 
Georgia, for the reason that both were laggards, and in neither did 
the Whigs try to erect a revolutionary legislature or employ any 
other adequate agency during 1774. The tardiness of Georgia in 
joining the Revolution was inevitable. She was the youngest and 
most nearly isolated of all the Provinces. The population was only 
about 17,000 whites, and all the militiamen of from 16 to 60 who 
could be collected from St. Mary’s on the coast up to Augusta 
numbered only 2850. Within the borders or along the frontier lay 
powerful tribes of Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw 
Indians, 10,000 of whom were warriors, and all of whom had been 
attached to the Crown through the presents and influence of British 
officers. 

On the south was the well-garrisoned Province of Florida, from 
which royal troops under Governor Tonyn, aided by loyalist volun¬ 
teers, might be brought up to harry Georgia. Naval raids would 
be easy. The prosperous colonists remembered with gratitude 
England’s generous bounties upon the culture of silk, indigo, and 
other products, and the million dollars she had given in Parlia¬ 
mentary grants. Governor Wright, who had served fifteen years, 

ee R j. Col. Rees., VII, 280; Staples, “R. I. in the Cont. Congress,” io; Foster, 
“Stephen Hopkins,” II, 232; Field, “R. I. at the End of the Century,” I, 225 ff. 

67 Scharf’s “Delaware,” I, 186-87, 215 ff.; W. T. Read, “Life and Corr. of George 
Read,” ch. I, II; Agnes Hunt. “Provincial Committees of Safety,” 98; L. P. Powell, 
“Historic Towns of the Middle States,” chapter on Wilmington. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


48 

was liked and respected; for he had labored ceaselessly to undo the 
evil wrought by incapable trustees under the old Proprietary gov¬ 
ernment, had won the amity of the Indians, and by negotiation had 
added millions of acres to the lands open to settlement. The 
metropolis, if we may so name the village of Savannah, was filled 
with placemen, and except in a few localities, Georgia had stronger 
bonds with England than with the sister colonies. 58 

There was no lack of radical agitators, or what Governor Wright 
called “liberty people,” in Georgia. They found it easy to set up 
a standard, but a more difficult matter to obtain recruits. The 
news of the Port Bill aroused Archibald Bulloch, Noble Wimberley 
Jones, John Houstoun, and George Walton, four men of property 
and dignity who had taken part in certain bickerings between House 
and Governor. The result was a notice in the only journal, the 
Georgia Gazette , on July 20, 1774, denouncing the bill and sum¬ 
moning all patriots to attend at the liberty pole at Tondee’s tavern 
in Savannah a week later. The first meeting was quite unsatis¬ 
factory because the outer parishes had received insufficient notice. 
A second gathering a fortnight later was more representative, but 
it failed to take the essential step of choosing delegates for the 
Continental Congress. 59 The most fervent center of Whig sentiment 
at this time was a seaboard community of Massachusetts folk called 
St. John’s parish, below Savannah, and it was so bitterly disap¬ 
pointed that for a time it thought of sending its own representative 
to Philadelphia. Yet leaders like Bulloch and N. W. Jones are 
not to be blamed because Georgia alone was unrepresented there. 
As judicious observers, they knew that the people were as yet little 
shaken in their faith in the Crown, and would resent precipitate 
action. Governor Wright had much justification for informing Lord 
Dartmouth that the two Provincial meetings were not the voice of 
the people, but only that of a small and precipitate junto. 60 Indeed, 
the loyalists met in various localities to express their dissent from 
the resolutions passed under the liberty pole, and showed an impres¬ 
sive strength. Thus the year passed with nothing substantial 
achieved. 

B8 Stevens’s “Georgia,” II, passim; Ga. Rev. Records, I, Introduction. 

09 Ga. Rev. Records, I, 11-17. 

60 Colls. Ga. Hist. Society, III, 180-81. But Wright remarked that as long as the 
agitators continued busy, “I apprehend there will be nothing but Cabals and Combi¬ 
nations and the peace of the Province and minds of the People continually heated 
disturbed, and distracted.” See Schlesinger, op. cit., 379 ff. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 49 

New York, however, stood foremost in 1774 among the Provinces 
of which Ministers could think without a sinking heart. Nowhere 
else was the Tory party quite so militant and effective. The aristo¬ 
cratic element, powerful in the whole Hudson valley, headed the 
opposition to the radical patriots, and this opposition, though com¬ 
posed of many groups, was surprisingly cohesive. It included most 
of the great landowners, such as the Van Cortlandts, Crugers, De 
Peysters, Cuylers, Roger Morris, Frederick Philipse, the Jessups, 
and the De Lanceys, men with wide estates, retinues of slaves, and 
roomy manor houses; most of the rich merchants; a large proportion 
of the professional men; many prosperous farmers; and lovers of 
the good old order generally. Members of the Anglican church, 
the most extensive and opulent of the denominations, formed in 
the main a phalanx of loyalists, and the loyalists, led by James 
De Lancey, were long called the Episcopal party. 61 Those who 
depended upon the merchants or patroons for a living frequently 
shared their attachment to the Crown. 

And as a whole, the royalists were as respectable for their char¬ 
acter and convictions as for their numbers. New York as much 
as any Colony shows us that the Tory party was long unjustly 
besmirched in reputation. The great body that was ably and 
honestly captained by Hutchinson and Oliver of Massachusetts, 
Galloway and Chew of Pennsylvania, De Lancey and Jones of 
New York, was not a body of time-serving cowards. Not only 
were many Tories men of the highest principle and courage, but 
they were swayed by a logic that Americans frequently honor. They 
held that if the colonists would dismiss needless anxieties, give 
over provocative measures, push aside all selfish agitators, and 
appeal to the British to do the same, then the genius of the race 
for compromise would assert itself, British statesmen would cease 
to insist upon legalistic claims, and the development of the Empire 
would proceed to a glorious future. 

The population of the Province in 1771, the year Tryon arrived 
as Governor, was 168,007, of whom some 150,000 were whites. 
New York city, still a perceptibly smaller seaport than Boston, 
had 21,863 people. With three newspapers, a few fine shops and 
residences, and King’s College to diffuse a classical tone, it was the 
only town of size or social gaiety in the Province. Albany, the 

81 Jones, “Hist. N. Y. During the Rev. War,” I, 2 ff. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


50 

seat of the fur trade and Indian traffic, had about 3,000 inhabitants, 
and Kingston was a straggling hamlet of fewer than two hundred 
houses. Little more than the southeastern part of the Province 
could be called settled—that is, Long Island, the districts on both 
sides of the Hudson, and small areas along the eastern part of 
the Mohawk. The most populous county on the east bank of the 
Hudson above New York city was Dutchess (22,404 people), with 
many settlers from across the Connecticut line; the most populous 
county on the west bank was Ulster (14,000 people), almost directly 
opposite. Albany County, including the vast territory north and 
west of the town of that name, had more inhabitants than both 
combined. 62 

Plausible evidence has been adduced for the assertion that more 
than half the people of the Colony, when the time came to cast the 
die, were either open Tories or too conservative to assist the patriot 
cause. The radical Whigs were represented everywhere, and were 
very powerful in Ulster County, eastern Long Island, and some other 
rural districts; but their stronghold was the poorer wards of the 
metropolis. Here the mechanics and artisans, who had many of 
the crude, turbulent, and, to the aristocratic party, offensive ways 
of the Boston harbor-workers, formed a compact mass of patriots. 63 

Try on, landing during a hot July week, and greeted by parading 
soldiers and applauding townsfolk, by merchants offering their 
congratulations and citizens joining with the King’s officers in 
drinking his health, took particular pleasure in one fact. He had 
learned in North Carolina what it was to have a legislature hostile 
to him, and he was delighted to be welcomed by a friendly Assembly 
as well as Council. The character of the lower house had been 
decisively changed by an election two years earlier. The Whig 
or Presbyterian party had gone down in defeat, all its prominent 
members save Philip Livingston, George Clinton, Nathaniel Wood- 
hull, the patriot general later killed near the outset of the war, 
and Philip Schuyler, losing their seats. The victorious Tory party 
had made immediate use of its victory to choose John Cruger, of 
New York city, speaker. 64 Twenty-seven members sat in the 

62 Roberts’s “New York,” I, ch. 21; Winterbotham’s “View of the United States,” 
II, 297 ff. 

88 Flick, “Loyalism in N. Y.,” passim. 

84 For this disastrous election of 1769 see G. W. Schuyler, “Colonial N. Y.,” II, 
262. For the sectarian controversy over King’s College that made the terms Episco¬ 
palian and Presbyterian party labels, see Jones, “Hist. N. Y.,” I, 12-17; Docs. Rel. Col. 
Hist. N. Y., VI, 913; and histories of Columbia University. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 51 

Assembly when Tryon opened it, four for the city and county of 
New York, two each for the other nine counties, and one each 
for the borough of Westchester, the town of Schenectady, and the 
three great manors, Livingston, Cortlandt, and Rensselaerwyck. 
The Tories counted the entire city delegation, consisting of Cruger, 
James De Lancey, Jacob Walton—all three of rich landholding 
families—and James Jauncey, as well as a majority of the remaining 
representatives. In 1772 the Assembly was swelled by members 
from two new counties, and the newcomers were Tory also. Inas¬ 
much as its conduct was perfectly satisfactory to the Crown, this 
legislature was never dissolved, and held its place from the spring 
of 1769 until it was overthrown in the Revolution. 

From the names of George Clinton and Philip Schuyler it must 
not be inferred that all the advantages of brains and energy were 
on the side of the Whigs. John Cruger and James De Lancey 
were Tory leaders of education and skill, and their followers included 
some able men. Nor is it to be thought that loyalists like Cruger 
and Pierre Van Cortlandt did not resent the arbitrary acts of 
Parliament and desire a reform. They differed from the Whigs 
not so much in the goal they sought as in the method by which 
they proposed to gain it. The tact with which they acted made 
it possible for thousands of moderate patriots to stand by them. 
As for the Council, it was staunchly loyalist. It had just one bold 
Whig member, William Smith, jr., and his boldness declined till 
he also took the King’s side. 

At first the two chief sources of agitation were the Tea Act and 
the presence of British troops in New York city. Non-importation 
was the natural weapon of the people against the hated excise laws, 
but the strength of the moderates prevented a thorough use of it. 
Two parties arose in 1772, after the British duties had been removed 
from everything but tea. The radicals wished to continue a sweeping 
non-importation policy; the merchants were willing to exclude tea 
alone. The latter canvassed the city, found about 3000 out of 4150 
men on their side, and carried their point. 65 As for the troops, 
wise old Cadwallader Colden had reported to the British government 
early in 1770 that a violent faction was trying to arouse the passions 
of the town against the infantry, and to provoke riots, but that 

66 Colden, “Letter-Books” (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 1876-77), II, 221-24; Docs. Rel. 
Col. Hist. N. Y., VIII, 218-220. Colden wrote July 7 that the canvass showed 1180 
for importation, about 300 neutral or silent, and few men of any prominence opposed. 
Flick, “Loyalism,” 21, gives the above figures. 


52 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the responsible population was unmoved. The townspeople, on the 
other hand, complained of provocation by the soldiery. The most 
important clash was the so-called Battle of Golden Hill, fought 
this year amid the January drifts of John Street. “An ill-humor 
had been artfully worked up between the townspeople and soldiers,” 
Colden wrote, “which produced several affrays, and daily, by means 
of wicked incendiaries, became more serious. At last some towns¬ 
people began to arm, and the soldiers rushed from their barracks 
to support their fellow-soldiers.” 66 In this encounter the troops 
did not fire, the civilians used clubs alone, and only one man was 
slain. But the important fact was that the more belligerent part 
of the people and the infantry had for the first time faced each 
other in arms. 

The acts by which the Assembly showed its hostility to all who 
wished to push New York along the radical road taken by Massa¬ 
chusetts and Virginia were emphatic. It met each January in 1773, 
1774, and 1775, and its sessions always lasted between two and three 
months. In the first year the question whether a further money 
grant should be made for the accommodation of the British troops 
was carried in the affirmative by a close margin. Next year a 
committee of correspondence had to be chosen, but it was so con¬ 
stituted that it was safely loyalist in character, Cruger being its 
chairman. A supply was granted His Majesty’s troops by the 
decisive vote of 18 to 2, 67 and £5000 was appropriated to Governor 
Try on in compensation for the burning of his house by incendiaries, 
14 to 11. George Clinton, it may be noted, showed his fairness 
by standing with those who wished the Governor reimbursed. At 
both sessions the Assembly steadfastly refused to protest against 
the Parliamentary enactments. It was prorogued too early in 1774 
to discuss the Boston Port Bill or the proposal for a Continental 
Congress, but it would have been little stirred by either. It was 
firmly on the Crown’s side. 

Yet among the general populace the Port Act aroused the same 
excitement that was felt in other Colonies; and the best measure 
of the strength of the moderates and Tories is the ease with which 
they brought this excitement under control. Nearly every tongue 
denounced the Act. But when a public meeting was called for 

68 Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 210-12; Feb. 21, 1770. 

67 Votes and Proceedings of the Gen. Assembly, 1774, p. 43 (February 8). 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 53 


May 16, 1774, at the Exchange, the cautious element in the city 
resolved to obtain the upper hand. “The loyalists made a point of 
attending,” says one Tory writer. Colden wrote to England: 68 

The men who at that time called themselves the committee who dictated and acted in 
the name of the people, were many of them of the lower rank, and all the warmest 
zealots of those called the Sons of Liberty. The more considerable merchants or 
citizens seldom or never appeared among them; but I believe were not displeased with 
the clamor and opposition that was shewn against internal taxation by Parliament. 
The principal inhabitants being now afraid that these hotheaded men might run the city 
into dangerous measures, appeared in a considerable body at the first meeting of the 
people, after the Boston Act was received here. They dissolved the former committee, 
and appointed a new one of fifty-one persons, in which care was taken to have a 
number of the most prudent and considerate persons of the place. Some of them 
have not before joined in the public proceedings of the opposition, and were induced 
to appear in what they are sensible is an illegal character, from a consideration that if 
they did not, the business would be left in the same rash hands as before. 


There were actually two public meetings, the first at which a 
committee of fifty was nominated, and the second at which the 
public approved it and added a fifty-first member. 69 An over¬ 
whelming majority of the committee was composed of conserva¬ 
tives, and the chairman, Isaac Low, a rich and able but opinionated 
and conceited merchant, was a moderate. No fewer than twenty- 
one of the members later adhered to the British side. The Tories 
and moderates rejoiced openly. Thus Rivington, the Tory editor, 
whose weekly Gazeteer was the leading loyalist organ in America, 
circulating in every Colony and having 3600 subscribers, wrote 
Henry Knox that it was now absolutely certain that neither non¬ 
importation nor non-exportation would be approved in New York 
or Philadelphia. The influence over the general public once 
wielded by the various “demagogues of a very turbulent faction in 
this city,” he said, had “expired instantly upon the election” of 
the new committee, which was made up chiefly of “inflexibly honest, 
prudent, and loyal citizens.” Colden thought the same. 70 The 
Tories and moderate Whigs had seized the helm in New York in 
just the same way that the moderate Whigs had done in Charleston. 

The radicals of New York were unfortunate not only in being 
numerically weak, but in having at first no great leaders like John 
Adams or Patrick Henry. Their resentment at being set aside 
was immediate. Four members of the Committee of Fifty-one were 
deputed to draft an answer to Boston’s request for a renewal of 


68 Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 339*41. 

38 4 Amer. Archives, I, 293 ft. M 

70 Idem, I, 293-302 ; Jones, “Hist. N. Y., 
II, 342. Schlesinger, op. cit., 329. 


I, 438 ff., 467; Colden, “Letter-Books,” 


54 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the non-importation agreement—Chairman Low, John Jay, James 
Duane, and Alexander McDougall. Jay and Duane, two leading 
barristers, were then regarded as safe conservatives. McDougall 
was a young radical, the son of a poor Scotch milkman, who four 
years previously had published violent attacks on the Assembly 
for voting a supply to the British military forces, had been clapped 
into jail, and had become a popular idol, feted and praised as a 
second John Wilkes. 71 The answer to the Boston communication, 
probably written by Jay, approved of a Continental Congress, but 
refused the request as to non-importation, declaring that so im¬ 
portant a question should be left to Congress for a decision. When 
the Committee of Fifty-one approved this paper, the anger of the 
radicals instantly flared up. It was a piece of selfish cowardice, 
dictated by the mercantile interests, they said. They held a 
meeting, decided that the Boston plan of stopping imports should 
and could be enforced, and set to work to give it effect by using 
the machinery of threats and spying which had been employed for 
the same purpose at the time of the Stamp Act. The merchants, 
thus beset, took a protest to the Committee of Fifty-one, and the 
latter body flew T to their rescue, denouncing the action of the hot¬ 
heads. Simultaneously the radicals demanded that their Committee 
of Mechanics share in the naming of delegates to Congress. 

Who were the principal hotheads? As Colden says, they were 
the leaders of the Sons of Liberty. This organization had first 
been formed in the thirties, when the printer Zenger had been tried 
for seditious libel in assailing the colonial governor and council, 
the founders being a triumvirate of brilliant young Yale men: 
John Morin Scott, William Smith, and William Livingston, lawyers 
all. It was revived during the Stamp Act agitation, lapsed again 
—though the three were consistently active with their pens in 
behalf of a larger colonial autonomy—and was reorganized on 
November 29, 1773. This time its leaders were McDougall, Isaac 
Sears, John Lamb, and Marinus Willett. They were all substantial 
men in the little city. McDougall had become an affluent merchant. 
Sears, who was the oldest and a Yankee by birth, was a prosperous 
participant in the coastwise trade; his influence over the common 
folk gave him the nickname of “King Sears.” Lamb, the son of 

71 For the famous trial of McDougall for his libel against the Assembly, see Jones 
I, 29-33; Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 211 ff.; Docs. Rel. Hist. N. Y., VIII, 213 ff. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO ST A TES 55 

an English optician, had amassed a considerable property in liquor 
importing. 72 It is significant that three of the extremist chieftains 
in New York should have been of the mercantile group chiefly 
injured by British taxes and restrictions. 73 Marinus Willett, the 
youngest, was in his early thirties. 

All four were men of great boldness and energy. In the French 
and Indian War Sears had commanded a privateer, McDougall with 
a little six-gun sloop had taken valuable West Indian prizes, and 
Willett had been with Abercrombie at Ticonderoga. All had been 
active in opposing the Stamp Act. 

McDougall caught John Adams’s fancy as the latter passed 
through New York to the first Congress. “He is a very sensible 
man and an open one,” Adams’s diary runs. “He has none of the 
mean cunning which disgraces so many of my countrymen.” 
Washington called him a brave soldier and a disinterested pariot. 74 
His imprisonment in 1770 had been an ovation rather than an 
ordeal. Ladies and gentlemen flocked to breakfast and dine with 
him, he was overwhelmed with gifts of wine and food, and he was 
obliged to publish a card fixing his hours for public receptions. Of 
Sears we have an amusing commendation from General Charles Lee. 
“He is a creature of much spirit and public virtue, and ought to have 
his back clapped,” wrote Lee in 1776. But the most striking 
personality was the wealthy Lamb, a man at once shrewd, generous, 
irascible, and stubborn-willed. He commanded the party which 
early in 1775 seized the British stores at Turtle Bay on the East 
River, and the squad which fired the first shots of the war in New 
York, killing and wounding sailors of the British warship Asia . 
No patriot leader was more. insistent upon his own dignity. When 
he marched under Montgomery against Quebec, as a captain of 
artillery, Montgomery found him insubordinate but invaluable. 
He was a man of bad temper, turbulent and troublesome, reported 
Montgomery, but one who could simply not be spared. 

In the second and more cautious rank of the radicals appeared 
men of greater abilities. John Morin Scott engaged in the plans 
of the republicans, the Tory historian Jones tells us, with all the 

72 Leake, “Life of Lamb,” g, io. The first seven chapters of this valuable work 
cover the’period till the overthrow of the royal government; the remaining eighteen 
deal with Lamb’s Revolutionary and wrongheaded post-Revolutionary career. 

78 “The merchants in this place think they have a right to every freedom of trade 
which the subjects of Great Britain enjoy. But the inhabitants of the country are 
absolutely free of the seditious spirit which rages in this town.” Colden, II, 62. 

71 John Adams, “Works,” II, 345; Washington, “Works,” Sparks Ed., IX, 186. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


56 

violence and acrimony of a madman, 75 but this is an exaggeration. 
He was a man of principle, a strong Whig from youth, frank and 
open in his manners, convivial in his habits, and possessed of a 
wide circle of acquaintances. A leading lawyer of the Province, 
he had made a small fortune at the bar. At his seat three miles 
out of town on the Hudson he dispensed a generous hospitality. 
“A more elegant breakfast I never saw,” wrote one plain Yankee 
visitor; “rich plate, a very large silver coffee pot, a very large silver 
teapot, napkins of the very finest materials, toast, and bread, and 
butter, in great perfection. After breakfast a plate of beautiful 
peaches, another of pears, and another of plums, and a muskmelon, 
were placed on the table.” 76 Peter Livingston, a retired merchant, 
called “Jew Peter” for his avarice, had the same firm but not 
intemperate zeal as Scott. Philip Livingston, a rough, blustering 
man, was also a staunch Whig, his ardor tempered by an inordinate 
prejudice, fairly common in the Middle Colonies, against all New 
Englanders. This second rank of the radicals was steadily recruited 
from the list of conservative Whigs. It was not long before Jay, 
with the best brain of all, and Duane, who owned a hundred thou¬ 
sand acres in the north, were ready to join it. 

When Lamb and his fellow agitators found themselves denounced 
by the Fifty-one, they took the bit between their teeth. By an 
unsigned press advertisement, they called a meeting for the hour 
after work on the evening of July 6, in “the Fields” or common, 
an open grassy space now directly overlooked by the Woolworth 
Tower. The crowd, enthusiastic and determined, was presided over 
by McDougall, and addressed by extremists, with one new orator 
of note—Alexander Hamilton, seventeen years old, a student at the 
royalist King’s College. As the fine summer evening closed, resolu¬ 
tions were adopted denouncing the Port Act, promising help to 
Boston (coins and bills were there dropped into a hat), and above 
all, declaring for non-importation. The temper of the gathering 
was bitterly hostile to the Fifty-one, and the Fifty-one responded 
with dignified anger. In a meeting the next day, they declared a 
firm enmity to any extremist program against the British Govern¬ 
ment. The result was a split in the Fifty-one. Eleven members 
affiliated with the Committee of Mechanics, including McDougall, 


7B Jones, “Hist. N. Y., I, 4 ff. 
TO John Adams, “Works,” II, 349. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 57 


Sears, and Peter Livingston, withdrew and published an appeal to 
the people. 

A Continental Congress had now become a certainty, and the 
Committee of Fifty-one assumed the right to superintend the sending 
of delegates from the metropolitan district. 77 It nominated Philip 
Livingston, Jay, Duane, Low, and John Alsop, the last-named 
another wealthy merchant, known to love both bishops and kings— 
a thoroughly conservative ticket, with Livingston’s name as a sugar- 
coating for the radicals. This ticket was submitted to all male 
freemen of the city on July 19, 1774, the mayor and aldermen 
supervising the counting of the votes. A stormy debate occurred, 
and the extremists, who were out in force, tried unsuccessfully to 
substitute McDougall’s name for that of Jay. 78 They did succeed, 
however, in defeating resolutions which the Committee of Fifty-one 
simultaneously proposed, again affirming that non-importation 
should be left for Congress to decree or reject. A week of con¬ 
fusion ensued. Jay and two of his colleagues refused to accept 
their election on the ground that the meeting had not been repre¬ 
sentative and that they approved of the rejected resolutions; and 
simultaneously the Committee of Mechanics demanded that the 
workmen be given a fuller voice in affairs. A new election by wards 
had to be held. The old ticket was again successful, emphasizing 
the fact that the so-called Patricians, not the Tribunes, were in 
control. Jay and Duane did yeoman service that fall in Philadel¬ 
phia, alongside Galloway of Pennsylvania and other conservatives, 
in restraining the radical delegates of the first Congress and laboring 


for reconciliation. 

The farmers and villagers of most rural sections had watched 
the actions of the radicals in the city unresponsively. “The present 
political zeal and frenzy is almost entirely confined to the city of 
New York,” wrote Colden in July. In October he added that a 
great deal of pains had been taken to persuade other counties to 
send delegates to Congress, or adopt those sent by the city, but 
that several had refused to be concerned in the measure. This 
was true. Ulster, Westchester, Dutchess, and Albany asked the city 


delegates to act for them, Kings, Suffolk, and Orange chose their 
own delegates, and the other counties ignored the invitation. In 

77 But only after considerable delay; Colden, ‘‘Letter-Books,” II, 346. 

78 4 Amer. Archives, I, 320-21; Jones, “Hist. N. Y., I, 464; Flick, Loyahsm, 23. 
New York City alone took a keen interest in this election; most of the rural districts 
were indifferent or hostile. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


58 

the counties immediately surrounding New York city the loyalists 
were especially strong and active. 79 Just a month after Congress 
opened, Colden reported an incident which dramatically proved 
the continued loyalty of the city itself. Certain New York mer¬ 
chants had received contracts for articles needed by the British 
troops in Boston. The radicals called a meeting, attended by few 
but the poorer classes, and warned the merchants to desist; where¬ 
upon the Committee of Fifty-one summoned a larger gathering, 
which silenced the turbulent minority and authorized the filling 
of the contracts. 80 

Yet as the fall of 1774 passed the situation began gradually to 
change. As the crisis in Massachusetts waxed, and as one Province 
after another shook off the old governmental vestures and put on 
new garments, many New Yorkers began to awaken from their 
apathy and many more to lose their conservatism. Fragmentary 
reports came from Philadelphia of the proceedings of Congress and 
of the speeches of its ablest members, acquainting them for the 
first time with the determined temper of other Colonies. Even men 
like the rich and snobbish Gouverneur Morris, who had been filled 
that spring with a horrified apprehension of mob rule, began to 
catch a perception that the convictions which the untutored city 
populace shared with such leaders as John Adams, Benjamin 
Franklin, and George Washington, might be essentially sound 
after all. 

One reflection of this change is to be seen in the flock of alarmed 
pamphlets and addresses which came flying thick from New York 
presses. Dr. Cooper of King’s College, Samuel Seabury, later the 
first Episcopal bishop in America, Isaac Wilkins, one of the Tory 
Assemblymen, and other alarmed loyalists, in these publications 
attacked the Continental Congress with vehemence, while Riving- 
ton’s Gazetteer spoke out as hotly for the Tories as John Holt’s 
Journal did for the patriots. Many loyalists had hoped that 
Congress would prove to be for all British America what the Com¬ 
mittee of Fifty-one had been for the Province of New York, where 
the violent radicals were driven from the field. Instead, they had 
seen an association for non-importation drawn up; Galloway’s plan 
for a British-American legislature to solve the problem of colonial 

79 See, e.g., Onderdonk’s “History of Queens County” for the hostility of the 
Queens loyalists. 

80 Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 367-68. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 59 

government totally suppressed; and cautious New Yorkers like 
Duane and Alsop overruled by zealots like Samuel Adams and 
R. H. Lee. The radicals in New York took courage from the bold 
stand of Congress and the bustle of revolutionary activity all over 
the continent. Many of the Provinces were now beginning to 
arm and drill. 

The recommendation by Congress of a non-importation agree¬ 
ment made necessary the creation of a patriot machinery to enforce 
it, and was accompanied by the request that county and town 
committees be chosen to carry it out. The New York radicals, 
who rightly regarded this recommendation as a heavy moral victory, 
took prompt action to force the choice of an energetic body. 
Lieutenant-Governor Colden still tried to take a hopeful view of 
the situation. Writing to London on November 2, he declared that 
the measures of Congress had elicited more dissatisfaction than 
applause in the Province, and that a great majority of the people, 
far from approving the dangerous and extravagant measures of 
New England, desired nothing so much as to put an end to the 
unhappy dispute with the mother country. 81 Nevertheless, when 
the new committee of observation, called the Committee of Sixty, 
was elected, he could not prevent a note of keen anxiety from 
creeping into his dispatches: 82 

The first thing done by the people of this place in consequence of the resolutions of 
the Congress, was the dissolution of the Committee of 51, in order to choose a new 
Committee of Inspection, to carry the measures of the Congress into effect. A day was 
appointed by advertisement for choosing 60 persons to form this new committee. 
About 30 or 40 citizens only appeared at the election, and chose the 60 who had 
been previously named by the former committee. I can no otherwise my lord account 
for the very small number of people who appeared on this occasion, than by supposing 
that the measures of the Congress are generally disrelished. . . . The non-importation 
association affects the smugglers as well as the fair traders. . . . 

In the present committee of this place there are several gentlemen of property, and 

who are esteemed to favor moderate and conciliatory measures.I have at length 

discovered that they act with a view to protect the city from the ravages of a mob. 
For this purpose they say that they are obliged at present to support the measures 
of the Congress—that if they did not, the most dangerous men among us would take 
the lead, and under pretence of executing the dictates of the Congress, would im¬ 
mediately throw the city into the most perilous situation. ... I fear, rfiy lord, there 
is too much truth in this representation. It is a dreadful situation. 


A dreadful situation!—so it seemed to any Tory with courage to 
look it in the face. The new committee, though also headed by 
Isaac Low, contained more radicals and fewer conservatives than 
the old Committee of Fifty-one. Moreover, the Committee of 


81 Colden, “Letter-Books,” II, 369-70. 

82 Idem, 37 2 -73- 


6o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Mechanics cooperated heartily in enforcing the non-importation 
agreement, and did it with a roughness which frightened the prop¬ 
ertied loyalists into silence. Brilliant young men like Jay and 
Gouverneur Morris, with some of the merchants, were moving 
farther to the left. The King’s appointees and the aristocratic Tory 
element, recently so confident, felt the ground trembling beneath 
their feet. 

Thus it was that the momentous year 1774 closed, in England 
and America, amid uncertainty and gloom. The King and Parlia¬ 
ment had loosed their bolt against the colonists in the punitive 
acts, all passed before the end of June. The colonists had replied 
by two great achievements, the establishment of a Continental 
Congress, and the erection in every Province save two of nascent 
agencies of government wholly in the hands of the progressive 
patriots. The rapidity with which these new agencies had come 
into being, and with which the royal authority had dropped like 
a palsied arm, was ominous. Three months had not elapsed from 
the receipt of the Port Act before seven Colonies—New Hampshire, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and 
South Carolina—had brought together congresses, conventions, or 
conferences representing the whole commonwealth. North Carolina 
and Massachusetts had soon followed. 

These bodies plainly contained the embryo of a complete revo¬ 
lutionary government for every colony. American administration, 
as the blindest might see, was beginning to slip wholly and perhaps 
irretrievably into the hands of the American people. As yet the 
transference was but tentative. The great majority of the inhab¬ 
itants hoped that it would be arrested by a compromise, and that 
the old royal agencies, though modified in form, would be restored. 
But the current of events was already carrying the colonists out 
of sight of the old landmarks, the stream was hurrying them on, 
and some believed they already heard in the distance the roar of 
that ocean called independence. 

III. Work of the Provincial Congresses 

As the creations of haste and anxiety, most of the early Provincial 
Congresses were crudely constituted. They were chosen in the 
most convenient way, and with no attempt to conform to a careful 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 61 


plan of representative government. In even the second New Jersey 
Congress, for example, we find the county delegations varying 
egregiously in size, Hunterdon sending fifteen men and Cape May 
only one. To the first Maryland Congress some counties dispatched 
a few delegates, others a small troop. If the radical farmers of a 
North Carolina county thought it cheapest and most convenient 
to content themselves with a single representative, well and good; 
but in some countrysides it seemed politic to honor all the leading 
families by membership. As for the Provincial conferences first 
held in Georgia and South Carolina, they were little better than mass 
meetings. In the former, “all persons within the limits of this 
Province” were asked to brave the July heat by gathering at Ton- 
dee’s Tavern, and many did so, but with unsatisfactory results. 
In South Carolina a queer hybrid meeting was held. The parishes 
outside Charleston sent uneven groups, and the Charleston leaders 
should have added a small deputation of their own to make up a 
deliberative body. Instead, they allowed the radical tradesmen and 
mechanics of the town and its conservative merchants and planters 
to crowd in indiscriminately. The gathering resembled a mob rather 
than a representative assemblage, and though it outstripped Georgia 
by choosing a delegation to the Continental Congress, it accomplished 
little else. 83 

In other Colonies, however, the Congresses from the outset had a 
clear-cut form, following the general model of the old Provincial 
House or Assembly. Thus in Virginia in the summer of 1774 each 
county chose two members, just as it had long elected two Burgesses. 
Most counties simply designated the former legislators. The first 
Congress in Massachusetts was largely identical with the old General 
Court. The chief difference was that it was somewhat larger, for 
each town was allowed to send as many delegates as it pleased; three 
days after steady sittings began at Concord in October, there were 
260 members, more than the General Court had ever seen. 84 Resent¬ 
ment had long existed over the desire of the Crown authorities to 
keep the membership of the House low, and their consequent reluc¬ 
tance to allow the incorporation of new settlements as towns. The 
Province chafed under any limitation upon the representation of its 
migrating population, and one of the first benefits which new com- 


s* Stevens’s “Georgia,” II, 77 ; N. C. Col. Records, X, 37, 38; Silver, “Provisional 
ovt. of Md., 1774 - 77 Drayton, “Memoirs of the Amer. Rev., I, 113, 126 . 

84 journals Prov. Congress; Cushing. 


62 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

munities seized from the Revolution was a seat in the patriot legis¬ 
lature. The same privilege was eagerly grasped in New Hampshire. 
Here the first Provincial Congress contained 85 delegates, and the 
fourth 131, the last including men from many towns theretofore 
barred, and boasting itself “the fullest representative body this 
Province ever had.” 85 

Caution was the keynote of the revolutionary congresses or con¬ 
ferences which met in the summer of 17 74 > and they confined them¬ 
selves to two or three main tasks. Where delegates to the Conti¬ 
nental Congress could not be appointed by the regular legislature, as 
they were in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, these irregular bodies 
had to name them. Virginia, for example, chose seven men of a 
high average of ability, four of whom were conservative Whigs, and 
three—Patrick Henry, George Washington, and R. H. Lee—progres¬ 
sives. North Carolina’s Provincial Congress elected three men, who 
were all radicals, though Joseph Hewes of the rather aristocratic 
Edenton community was of a less ardent temperament than William 
Hooper or Richard Caswell. New Hampshire sent two men, one of 
them John Sullivan, a lawyer whose success at the bar, where he 
had amassed a fortune of ten thousand pounds in a few years, was 
the envy of John Adams. Sullivan had been a favorite both of 
Governor Wentworth and the people, and was destined to be a 
patriot general of high usefulness. Maryland chose five sons, repre¬ 
senting her advanced section of opinion by the radical and impetuous 
Samuel Chase, and the more moderate majority by the wealthy 
Thomas Johnson and Matthew Tilghman. New Jersey also elected 
five delegates, with William Livingston at their head. 

These men were given brief instructions by every Colony. It 
happened that in Virginia Jefferson, who was absent because of 
illness, wrote a set of proposed instructions which attracted wide 
attention for the vigor with which they attacked the Crown’s meas¬ 
ures. They declared that the relation between England and America 
was identical with that which had subsisted between England and 
Scotland after James I became king but before their union, and 
asserted that England had no more right to govern America because 
she had colonized it than the Danes and Saxons had to govern 
England because their forefathers had settled the island. These 

86 Each New Hampshire town was originally asked to select “one or more persons”; 
N. H. Prov. Papers, VII, 400, 401. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 63 


resolutions were too revolutionary to have a chance of passage, for 
even R. H. Lee believed that Britain possessed the right to regulate 
American trade; but when printed in pamphlet form, they circulated 
extensively in both England and America. 86 

The two other tasks of these first revolutionary legislatures were 
to offer moral and material aid to Massachusetts, and to strike back 
at Great Britain with the old economic weapon, non-intercourse. 
We need not pause over the resolutions passed to cheer New Eng¬ 
land, nor the steps taken to send money and provisions to Boston. 
As for trade warfare, systematic non-importation had been tried in 
1765-66 in answer to the Stamp Act, and in 1769 in answer to the 
Townshend taxes, half ruining many British merchants and con¬ 
tributing much to the partial reversal of British policy which fol¬ 
lowed. It was hoped that it might now help obtain a withdrawal of 
the punitive measures. 

At first the Colonies presented a ragged, uncertain alignment. 
The upper South went the farthest, partly because the planters of 
Maryland and Virginia, and the planters and farmers of North 
Carolina, were becoming passionately aroused by the issues of con¬ 
stitutional and personal liberty; partly because many of them, always 
deep in debt to British merchants, with their crops pledged for 
seasons to come for goods already received, had no objection to a 
relief from the pressure of debt-collectors. Virginia led the way. 
After the Burgesses had stopped the trade in East India goods in 
May, the August Convention decided upon a sweeping interdiction 
of British commerce, widely influential in other Colonies—no goods 
or slaves were to be imported after the beginning of November, and 
if American grievances were not previously redressed, the shipment 
of all goods to Britain was to cease Aug. 10, I 775- 87 The closing of 
the courts amounted to a moratorium for debts. Maryland’s Con¬ 
gress in July endorsed an association for stopping both importation 
and exportation. North Carolina was not a heavy user of the im¬ 
ported luxuries demanded elsewhere in the South of furniture, wines, 
books, silks, carriages, and china; but she followed Virginia’s ex¬ 
ample, deciding to stop buying British imports with the New Year, 
and to cease shipments to England October 1, 1775. 88 


SMS?'CKS’ Committee System,” ,46 .Richard Bland, 

,ouJh a conservative was the reputed author of ‘ his . s »??l! ln |, n °" H ' nte 1 r 5 OU I r o e a, P « 
m Proceedings of the N. C. Convention are given in Col. Records, IX, 1043 - 49 * 


64 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


In the two leading Middle Colonies the great merchants had little 
inclination to ruin themselves by cutting off the overseas trade. We 
have seen how the propertied leaders of New York City organized to 
meet the radical movement for non-importation there, and quashed 
it. Both there and in Pennsylvania it was decided to wait for the 
Continental Congress to pronounce upon the question. In South 
Carolina similar friction promptly developed. When the Provincial 
conference was held in July, the merchants opposed an interruption 
of commerce with Great Britain, while the mechanics and shop¬ 
keepers favored it. A decade earlier, following the Stamp Act, that 
born radical Christopher Gadsden had led the workmen to victory 
against the mercantile class on the same issue, but now it was left 
to the Continental Congress. Four of the five South Carolina dele¬ 
gates in Philadelphia that fall were at first unwilling to agree to the 
stoppage of exportation unless rice and indigo were excepted, and in 
the end they signed the Continental Association only after a com¬ 
promise had been effected, the shipment of rice being allowed, that 
of indigo barred. The discrimination between the two products 
at once produced a quarrel in South Carolina, the indigo growers 
demanding a compensation for their loss, and eventually receiving it. 
But in general all differences between the Colonies on this subject 
were ironed out by the action of the Continental Congress in October. 
It drew up an agreement by which all British imports were to be 
rejected beginning December i, 1774, and by which exportation was 
to cease September 10, 1775. 

This measure was modeled on the Virginia agreement, and the 
Virginia plan of enforcement was also adopted. Throughout the 
summer and fall the counties of the Old Dominion had been ap¬ 
pointing committees, to which the Provincial Convention deputed 
the task of seeing that the trade boycott was observed by everyone, 
willing or unwilling. They differed from the older local committees, 
set up in various parts of America since 1772, in that their chief 
duty was inspection, not correspondence. Congress now called for 
such bodies in every county, city, and town, and a host of them 
sprang into being as if by magic. In most localities the radicals 
rallied with enthusiasm, like the mechanics behind the Committee 
of Sixty in New York, to make the word of these bodies law. The 
drastic way in which the county committees of Maryland dealt 
with anyone who tried to bring forbidden commodities into the 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 65 


Province was well illustrated by the affair of the brig Peggy Stewart. 
When it arrived in October with more than a ton of tea, the public 
indignation was intense; the owners and the consignees, humbly 
apologizing, offered to burn the cargo, but without satisfying the 
people; and finally the former, after consulting with sober leaders, 
stated their willingness to burn the vessel too—which was donel 

In North Carolina the organization of committees proceeded all 
fall, and in some counties they reached enormous size, a hundred 
members or more being chosen to prevent any jealousy among rival 
families, and to bind them all to the Whig cause. At Charleston 
there was also a huge committee, at first constituted upon occupa¬ 
tional lines—15 merchants, 15 mechanics, and 69 planters—which 
took charge of the city and harbor, while smaller bodies formed in 
every parish and district. On February 16, 1775, a vessel from 
Glasgow arrived at New York, and the Sixty forbade it to unload. 
When the lieutenant of a British warship tried to interfere, the com¬ 
mittee instantly seized the warship’s captain and made him order 
his subordinate aside. 89 

At first the object of these committees was simply to enforce the 
boycott, but in many towns and counties they quickly took over 
nearly all governmental powers, acting like the vigilance committees 
of a later day. This was equally true in large ports like New York, 
Baltimore, and Charleston, and in rural communities. In such 
Provinces as Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey, every county 
was a little world of its own, in which the authority of a determined 
group might be absolute. “Everything is managed by committee,” 
we soon find one Virginia loyalist lamenting, “setting and pricing 
goods, imprinting books, forcing some to sign scandalous concessions, 
and by such bullying conduct they expect to bring government to 
their own terms.” 90 

What were the penalties they imposed? Congress, which was in a 
milder mood than most of the Provincial and local bodies, expected 
them simply to exert the power of public sentiment, stamping every 
recreant citizen with infamy. But these revolutionary bodies, num- 


ited in a district conference. 


66 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


bering rough and irresponsible men as well as patriots of the highest 
type, could not always be restrained within neat paths of decorum. 
Civil wars are not made with eau de cologne, and the contest between 
Whig and Tory was fast verging upon civil war. There had been 
not a little mob violence even before the middle of 1774- John 
Adams, in a letter of July 7 evoked by an outrage upon a merchant 
of Scarborough, Massachusetts, had bitterly denounced “these tar- 
rings and featherings, this breaking open houses by rude and insolent 
rabble.” 91 Mob activity throughout America increased during the 
autumn and winter, and frequently was approved or even instigated 
by the local committees. Everywhere the committees encouraged 
Whig sentiment, warned the loyalists to be quiet, deprived them of 
their arms, and compelled them to sign the Association. The inde¬ 
fensible acts of which some committees were guilty soon led to a 
movement among moderate men, particularly marked in Virginia and 
North Carolina, to bring them under the rigid supervision of the 
Provincial Congresses or Conventions. 

It became evident in the fall and winter of 1774 that the arbitra¬ 
ment of arms was only too probable. As a consequence of the non¬ 
importation agreement, the merchants of London, Bristol, and 
Glasgow petitioned Parliament for a reconciliation with America, 
pointing out that millions of pounds were due them from the Ameri¬ 
can people, and that thousands of ships and sailors were normally 
employed in the trade now stagnant. But these petitions, like the 
pleas of Fox, Wilkes, and Burke, were little heeded by the Ministry. 
Lord North’s conciliatory resolutions passed in the early spring of 
1 775, proposing an exemption from imperial taxation to any Colony 
which should voluntarily make a contribution to the common defense 
satisfactory to the Crown; but the futility of any such offer excited 
ridicule in England as well as America. The Commons on February 
2 passed an address to the King so angry in tone that Horace Walpole 
called it a vote for a civil war. And more alarming still were the 
events in and about Boston. When Gage at the beginning of Sep¬ 
tember, 1774, sent a party of troops to seize a store of powder at 
Medford, the result was a rally of thousands of militia and other 
armed men at Cambridge, who were with difficulty dissuaded from 
marching upon Boston. After the annual muster of the Massachu¬ 
setts militia that fall the companies never really disbanded, remain- 


91 C. F. Adams, “Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife,” 20: see 
Fisher, “True Hist, of the Amer. Rev.,” ch. 8. 


S. 


G. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 67 


ing ready to spring to arms. Gage, beginning to fortify Boston Neck, 
was unable to obtain American carpenters for the work even by 
sending to New Hampshire and New York. The reconnoitring by 
British troops in the vicinity of Boston, the continued seizure of 
munitions wherever practicable, and such menacing demonstrations 
by the Crown forces as accompanied the anniversary of the Boston 
massacre, March 5, 1775, increased the tension day by day. 

As Massachusetts was the storm center, naturally the Provincial 
Congress of Massachusetts led the continent in making military 
preparations. As early as October, 1774, when it was sitting at 
Concord, committees were appointed to find out just what armed 
forces were available, and to draft a plan for strengthening them. 
It was decided to appoint a Committee of Safety, which was imme¬ 
diately named; to commission three generals; and to organize the 
militia in companies and regiments for equipment and intensive in¬ 
struction. The three generals named were Jedidiah Preble, Artemas 
Ward, and Seth Pomeroy. Pomeroy was the old Northampton gun¬ 
smith who, a veteran of King George’s War and the Seven Years’ 
War, was later hailed at Bunker Hill by Putnam with the gleeful 
shout, “By God, Pomeroy, you here! A cannon shot would waken 
you out of your grave!” Ward had fought under Abercrombie in 
Canada ; and Preble had been present as a major when the Acadians 
were expelled from Nova Scotia. On every village common the 
quiet training of militia was taken in hand by commanders who 
pushed any old militia officers thought to be attached to the Crown 
brusquely aside. Efforts were made to obtain a sufficiency of arms 
and ammunition, and the small game of the Province rejoiced in a 
sudden immunity from hunting. 92 

The second Provincial Congress, meeting at Cambridge on Febru¬ 
ary 1, 177S, took every possible step to prepare the Massachusetts 
army for the hostilities now imminent. Two new generals were 
appointed, John Thomas and William Heath, and were directed to 
oppose by force two of the recent acts of Parliament. 93 A committee 
ascertained the exact number of officers and men, and the quantity 
of ammunition and general equipment in the town storehouses, as a 
basis for the effective redistribution of the Colony’s munitions. The 
British knew that stores were being concentrated, and did their best, 

92 Journals Prov. Congress, 21 ff.; Frothingham, “Siege of Boston,” 41 ff. 

93 Cushing, 133 - 34 - 


68 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


which was little, to interfere with the patriots’ plans. On March 18 
the redcoat guard at Boston Neck seized nearly 13,500 cartridges, 
with a ton and a half of balls, and though this was private property, 
refused to give it up. 

A few days earlier a symbolic incident had occurred. When on 
March 6 the Old South Church was crowded with people to hear 
Dr. Joseph Warren’s oration on the anniversary of the Boston 
Massacre, forty or fifty British officers pushed their way into the 
place, and were installed by Samuel Adams in the front pews. At 
one of the orator’s passionate appeals, an officer seated on the pulpit 
stairs held up a handful of pistol bullets before Warren, who calmly 
dropped his handkerchief over the open palm and proceeded. 94 On 
April 5, the Congress adopted articles of war. Two days later, it 
called upon the people of each county to put their militia and 
minute-men in a posture for immediate action. The next day, with 
Lexington less than a fortnight away, it resolved that the dangerous 
situation of public affairs made it necessary to put an army into the 
field at once; and delegates were sent to the three neighboring prov¬ 
inces to enlist their aid. 

Immediately after Lexington the Massachusetts Congress voted 
unanimously that America ought to muster an army of 30,000, and 
that Massachusetts must contribute 13,600 men. The Committee 
of Safety and four other members were set to work on a plan of 
organization. Handbills were distributed, and each county was 
asked to suggest the men best fitted for positions of command. 
Thereafter the Congress labored unremittingly to keep its force 
ready for action. It ordered enlistments, built fortifications, com¬ 
missioned officers, and made rules of discipline. It entered into the 
pettiest details of military equipment. In the middle of May, it 
requested the Continental Congress to take some measures for direct¬ 
ing and regulating the American forces. By this time they consisted 
of 20,000 men, stretching in a line thirty miles long from Cam¬ 
bridge around Boston to Roxbury. The leaders included Putnam, 
of Connecticut, who had fought at Ticonderoga with Lord Howe, 
Stark, of New Hampshire, who had also made a brave record in the 
last French war, and Ethan Allen, the dashing colonel of the Green 
Mountain boys. The commander was Artemas Ward, and his sub¬ 
ordinate next in rank was John Thomas, who had served as a 

84 Frothingham’s “Warren,” 430 ff.; Hutchinson’s “Diary and Letters,” 528-29. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 69 


surgeon at the capture of Louisbourg. Meanwhile, the Congress had 
to provide for the refugees from Boston, of whom 5,000 were soon 
distributed among the villages. 95 

The principal arm of the Provincial Congress in administering 
affairs was the Committee of Safety, of which the most prominent 
members were John Hancock and Dr. Warren. In its hands were 
placed the direction of enlisted men, the care of military supplies, 
and the guarding of suspicious persons. Twice during the spring its 
powers were enlarged, while its membership was increased from nine 
to thirteen. This small body was expected to summon and control 
all armed forces, to look after the equipment of the soldiers, and for 
the time being, to commission the officers. The flocking of raw 
volunteers from all parts of New England to Boston made the 
responsibility heavy. Many of the field officers were totally incom¬ 
petent, for the Congress had invited any one who could enlist fifty- 
nine men to take a captaincy, and any one who could organize ten 
companies a colonelcy. A motley array of a few veterans and many 
inexperienced farmers and fishermen, shopkeepers and artisans, had 
to be whipped into shape, fed, and sheltered. 

The Committee gave careful attention to interminable lists of items 
—food, picks, wagons, tents, shells, powder, medicines, and artillery. 
It decided how much codfish, bacon, and meal made a ration. It 
was feverishly busy before and after Lexington in concentrating mu¬ 
nitions where they could most effectively be used. It tried to enlist 
as many men as possible for a definite term of seven months. The 
little army over which Washington took command at Cambridge 
was not well furnished—John Adams, who saw it, said so, and the 
British called it “a rustic rout with calico frocks and fowling pieces.” 
It lacked blankets, clothing, and fuel, the quarters were a picturesque 
array of tents, cabins, sail-cloth shelters, and brush-thatched huts of 
turf or stone, it had not five rounds of powder a man, and it was 
fed largely by gifts from the far-stretching farms of New England. 
But that it was sufficiently well equipped to be effective was attrib¬ 
utable to the foresight and unwearied labor of the Committee and 
the Provincial Congress. 96 

In war every community inevitably tries to make itself a great 


85 Parkman, “Montcalm and Wolfe,” ed. 19M, I, PP- 291, 428, 44 * ffj H, 94 , 123. 

»9 see letters from Boston the summer of 1775 »n Almon s ‘ Remembrancer j 
Marks’s “England and America, 1763-1783,” I, 380; Lodge’s “Story of the Revolution, 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


70 

workshop. The Provincial Congress had little need to concern itself 
with the boycott of English imports, for that was already almost 
complete, but from the beginning it labored to make the Province 
self-supporting. It early appointed a committee to report upon the 
best means of increasing native manufactures, while it also arranged 
for a thorough census of the population and its finished products. 
The people were urged to turn energetically to the making of nails, 
gunpowder, steel, tin plates, and other articles, and to the raising of 
large crops. Directions for making saltpeter were scattered through¬ 
out the Province, and the Congress offered a high price for all that 
was turned over to it during 1775, while a similar guarantee was 
given the makers of firearms and bayonets. 97 

The rest of New England kept almost equal pace with Massa¬ 
chusetts in her early preparations for war. We have noticed that 
the Connecticut Assembly, adjourning November 4, 1774, had pre¬ 
viously ordered a general muster and arranged for carrying on drill 
all winter. When it met again on March 2 it could not have acted 
more wisely had it foreseen that fighting would begin the next 
month. 98 It at once directed that one fourth the militia, or six 
regiments, be assembled and equipped for active service, and fixed 
the men’s pay. It ordered 3,000 stand of arms, 1300 axes, picks, 
and spades, and 500 tents, and made the Governor’s son commissary- 
general. A few important cases of Toryism that had cropped up, 
chiefly along the New York border, were dealt with by the Provincial 
authorities, but the Whiggism of Connecticut was so uniform that 
from other Colonies loyalists were later exiled to the land of steady 
habits. 

In both Rhode Island and New Hampshire also men drilled all 
winter. The Assembly of the former Colony in December appointed 
a committee of five to revise the militia laws, one of the five being 
a studious young forge-master, a private in the Kentish guards who 
had lately gone to Boston to buy a musket and some military books— 
Nathanael Greene. 99 On the fourteenth of the same month, a drum 
began to beat in the streets of the little New Hampshire capital, a 
a force of 400 patriots collected in the cold, and they marched against 
Fort William and Mary, overwhelming the four or five defenders 
without loss of life, though several cannon were discharged from 

97 Journals Prov. Cong., 52, 61, 62-5, 103. 

98 Conn. Public Records, XIV, 388 ff. 

90 F. V. Greene, “General Greene,” 17. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 71 


the ramparts. Governor Wentworth was now quite helpless. He 
ordered the enlistment of thirty men to guard the fort, but nobody 
responded, he commanded the magistrates to jail the offenders, but 
not a warrant was sent out, and he had to content himself with 
dismissing a few officeholders concerned in the attack. 100 

Farther south men did not rankle under the presence of a grim 
imperial force camped on their own soil, and imperial ships ranging 
their own coast; they could not so easily look down the road and 
imagine a force of redcoat invaders topping the hill. Yet some 
Provinces were preparing to fight in the same spirit as New England. 
Lord Dunmore of Virginia occupied a sad Christmas eve in 1774 in 
writing to Lord Dartmouth that every county was arming an inde¬ 
pendent militia company. All British authority had been set aside, 
he testified, so that there was not even a justice of the peace active; 
his own power had grown so feeble that he could not issue a single 
order, for it would only be laughed at and humiliate the Crown; and 
he saw no hope for the future save a faint possibility of dissension 
among the patriots. 101 In Virginia the non-importation agreement 
was rigidly maintained, partly because the planters had so long 
smarted under a sense of economic vassalage to the British. When 
the merchants and factors tried to resist it by forcing up prices, the 
county committees resorted to price-fixing decrees, and sternly 
enforced them. 

Whig agitators were busy calculating just how much Virginia’s 
past dependence upon England in all commercial operations had 
cost her. One newspaper writer estimated that in every £100 of 
non-British goods imported from England—silks, or Madeira wines, 
or French jewelry—the colonists lost £75 in profits to English 
middlemen. As such importations normally amounted to at least 
£350,000 a year, the Britons were gainers by £262,500 annually. 
Again, he computed that there were at least fifty flourishing British 
mercantile companies with Virginia agencies, and that their average 
net profits were £15,000 a year apiece, or £750,000 in all. The 
salaries of their factors alone were £120,000 a year. This ingenious 
statistician put the British profit in buying Virginia’s tobacco at 
£2 200,000 a year, and the whole annual toll of the mother country, 


1 

ter, XXII, 277* T 

101 4 Amer. Archives, I, 1062. 


72 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


apart from the wages of place-hunters, at just short of £6,ooo,ooo. 102 
Such an estimate was preposterous, but it helps explain why the 
Association was so well observed, and why every muster field was 
echoing with commands. 

No legislature met during the winter or early spring, for Dunmore 
repeated his prorogations, but the Provincial Convention held its 
second session in March, 1775* 103 This new gathering was called in 
the village of Richmond, far up the James, where the members would 
enjoy more freedom than at the capital. It brought the sharpest clash 
between the radical and conservative Whigs that the Colony had yet 
seen. The Convention on its third day took up military affairs, and 
Patrick Henry offered a resolve “That this Colony be immediately 
put into a posture of defense,” and proposed a committee which 
should prepare a plan for enlisting and arming a force. 

There was nothing extreme or illogical in this, yet the conservatives 
rose in angry opposition. St. George Tucker, who watched the 
proceedings as a visitor, says that there occurred an animated de¬ 
bate, in which Richard Bland, R. C. Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, 
and Edmund Pendleton opposed the resolution as premature. These 
men believed that a threat of armed force might so antagonize the 
moderates and Whigs in England as to make all hopes of a peaceful 
agreement vain; while Patrick Henry was convinced that such hopes 
were fatuous, and that war was at hand. He listened with uncon¬ 
cealed impatience as Bland and the others argued. Then he rose, 
and in the most famous speech of the Revolution, declared that it 
was insane to temporize; that judging from the past, the colonists 
had nothing to hope for in British forbearance; that the Crown was 
marshaling its forces, and the next wind from the north might bring 
the clash of arms; and that as for any fear to test the youthful 
strength of the Provinces against Great Britain, others might hesitate, 
but he would have liberty or death. Washington, Jefferson, and 
R. H. Lee supported him, and his resolution passed by the close vote 
of 65 to 6o. 104 

102 “A Planter,” Virginia Gazette, April 13 1776. “You are without merchants, 

ships, seamen, or shipbuilders. . . . Your trade is confined to a single spot on the 
globe, in the hands of the natives of a distant island, who fix the market of all 
commodities at their pleasure, and we may be very sure will rate yours at the lowest, 
and theirs at the highest, they will in any conscience bear. Every article of merchan¬ 
dise, that is not the produce of Britain, must first pay its duties to the Crown, per¬ 
haps must be increased in the price a very large per cent, there, and then be re¬ 
exported to Virginia, and undergo an additional advance of 75, or sometimes near 150 
per cent, here.” The planter wrote that he hoped independence would not be pre¬ 
vented by negotiation. 

108 See Virginia Gazette, February, for elections to the March Congress. 

104 Tyler’s “Henry,” ch. 9. 


THE TRANSITION FROM COLONIES TO STATES 73 

The committee chosen to prepare the plan of defense was bril¬ 
liantly able; and in the main it was composed of radicals, for it 
included Henry, R. H. Lee, Washington, and Jefferson. It lost no 
time. A day later it brought in its report, which after a few amend¬ 
ments was immediately approved. Before the Convention closed, it 
also appointed a committee to prepare a program for stimulating 
manufactures, while it adopted a new Association. Had Patrick 
Henry completely had his way at this March session, Virginia would 
have been thrown into open rebellion. He would not only have 
raised troops, but would have appointed civil officers under new 
commissions, levied taxes, and treated the Crown government as 
totally overthrown—perhaps have expelled Dunmore. This was too 
much for the conservatives and moderates, but they had yielded to 
Henry’s insistence that the Province be made ready for instant 
hostilities . 105 

South Carolina, which was not behindhand, offered a dramatic 
illustration of the spirit of the people. In March the revolutionary 
authorities there appointed an important secret committee of five to 
provide for defense, and a committee of intelligence to collect in¬ 
formation. The former body included two prominent radicals— 
William Henry Drayton, a gifted young judge whom the Crown had 
just suspended from the bench, and Arthur Middleton, who had 
been educated in Whig principles in England . 106 The committee of 
defense acted at once. The night after its appointment it superin¬ 
tended the seizure of the public powder in two Charleston magazines, 
and of the arms and stores in the State House. Many prominent 
men were present, including President Charles Pinckney of the 
Provincial Congress and Chairman Henry Laurens of the Charleston 
general committee. The Commons House being then sitting, the 
perplexed Lieutenant-Governor Bull appealed to it. Some of the 
very men who had engaged in the raids concurred in voting an inves¬ 
tigation, which resulted in the farcical report that no certain intelli¬ 
gence of the affair was obtainable, but that there was reason to 
think that it had been inspired by the late alarming news from 
England. Of the remaining Colonies, Maryland’s Provincial Con¬ 
vention acted energetically in December, 1774, when all males be¬ 
tween sixteen and fifty were called upon to form companies and 


1 Eckenrode, 96 ff. . „ „ 

5 McCrady, “S. C. Under the Royal Govt., *786 ff. 


74 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


begin drilling; while the county authorities were authorized to raise 
by subscription a total of £10,000 for expenses. 107 In Pennsyl¬ 
vania, North Carolina, and New Jersey the county authorities were 
drilling and outfitting troops during the winter, and the first-named 
Province gave special attention to the manufacture of ammunition, 
firearms, and bayonets. 

Thus it was that most of the Colonies were zealously preparing for 
the event when the 19th of April arrived—the day that dawned with 
a crackle of musketry about Lexington, and that closed with an 
exhausted British column crawling back into Boston, the country 
for miles around pouring troops toward the city, and couriers already 
started for the neighboring Provinces. American communications 
were slow, a fact which hampered all efforts for a continental union, 
but the spring season saw the Fiery Cross sent around with unex¬ 
ampled rapidity. Lexington was fought on Wednesday. On Thurs¬ 
day morning Major Israel Putnam, ploughing his farm at Pomfret, 
Connecticut, caught the irregular beat of a drum coming down the 
road, and heard a horseman, his bridle wet with foam, shout the 
news across the furrows. Putnam unharnessed, paused a moment 
at his house, and was off for Boston. A year earlier, he had replied 
with ready humor to the query whether 5000 British regulars might 
not march from one end of America to the other: “Yes, if they 
behave and pay their way; but if they make any disturbance, our 
housewives will knock them on the heads with their ladles.” On 
Sunday the news was known in New York. In little more than a 
fortnight every American, to the backwoods of North Carolina and 
Georgia, had heard the alarm. 

i°t “Proceedings of the Conventions of the Province of Md., 1774-76,” passim. 


CHAPTER THREE 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

The repercussion of Lexington throughout America sent half of 
the royal governors scurrying for safety. The debonair and once 
popular John Wentworth of New Hampshire, for all his intrepidity, 
was one of the first to go. Though after Lexington 1200 New 
Hampshire men at once set out to join the forces about Boston, 
Wentworth for a time still hoped and labored for peace. Following 
the receipt of Lord North’s conciliatory proposal, he had called a 
new Assembly which, containing the Colony’s leading men, met 
May 4, 1775. Unfortunately for the Governor, the House not only 
returned an unfavorable reply to Lord North’s offer, but it evinced 
a warm resentment of Wentworth’s attempt to give three new towns 
the right of representation by the King’s writ, as a special guberna¬ 
torial authorization was called. 1 The House had always resisted 
efforts to interfere with its exclusive power to control representation, 
though Governor Benning Wentworth had beaten it upon this ques¬ 
tion about 1750, and now it emphatically bade the three claimants 
begone. Meanwhile signs of increasing violence had appeared. At 
the end of May there had been mild rioting in Portsmouth over the 
seizure of two provision ships by a British frigate, and many con¬ 
servatives—such men as Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford 
—were being driven from the rural districts. On June 13 one of the 
royalists whom Wentworth had tried to assist to a seat in the As¬ 
sembly was espied calling at the Governor’s fine house, and a mob 
besieged the mansion, threatening to batter it down with a cannon. 
The crowd dispersed when the loyalist was given up, but the episode 
showed Wentworth how much danger he ran, and he withdrew to 
Fort William and Mary, where he was safe under the guns of a 
British warship. 2 

1 N H. Prov. Papers, VII, 370, 383 ff; Stackpole, II, 77 ff. 

* On July 18, 1775, he adjourned the House to September 28, and it never met 
again. N. H. Prov. Papers, VII, 385-86. Wentworth joined Howe in Boston, went 
to New York, and after giving up hope of an invasion of New Hampshire, sailed to 
England in 1778. Mayo’s “John Wentworth,” 163 ff. 

75 


76 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


In Virginia the news of Lexington and Concord reached the ears 
of the patriots at a moment when they were agitated by stirring 
events at Williamsburg. Lord Dunmore committed the same folly 
that Gage had committed at Boston, and at almost the same time. 
On the night of April 20 a party of British marines from the 
schooner Magdalen in the James landed and in Lord Dunmore’s 
wagon carried off fifteen half-barrels of powder from the round 
ammunition storehouse in Williamsburg. At this highhanded act 
many of the people in and about the town caught up their arms as 
those about Boston had done the day before, but the town officials 
—who, with many other conservatives, were eager to have the peace 
maintained—quieted them by offering assurances that the powder 
would be restored. The Provincial Council protested, but being also 
conservative, accepted the Governor’s flimsy excuse that the seizure 
had been a precaution against an apprehended slave rebellion. 

Meanwhile, more distant communities received the news of Dun- 
more’s act, and thousands of armed men prepared to march on the 
capital, one Fredericksburg company notifying George Washington 
that it was ready to advance within a few days. For a time it seemed 
dubious whether Peyton Randolph and other conservatives would 
quell the rising storm or not. But while others hesitated, Patrick 
Henry caught up the gauntlet. He at once summoned a company 
of his own Hanover County militia to meet him on May 2, 1775, 
set out for Williamsburg with several thousands more flocking to 
his standard, and frightened Governor Dunmore into a hasty payment 
of £330 for the powder on May 4. Two days later, when Henry was 
far on his road home, Dunmore issued a proclamation denouncing 
him as a rebel and warning all citizens not to aid or countenance him. 
Many counties responded by votes of thanks to Henry, but as yet the 
peace remained unbroken. 3 

Events now moved rapidly in Virginia. The Assembly, meeting on 
June 1, rejected Lord North’s offer in a drastically hostile message 
written by Jefferson and carried by him to the new Continental 
Congress. 4 It voted its approval of the acts of the Provincial 
Convention, and refused to pass fee bills to permit the reopening of 
the courts. 5 All the while, as one item of news after another arrived 
from the North, public sentiment was growing angrier. The Vir- 

8 See Eckenrode, “The Revolution in Virginia”; 4 Amer. Archives, II, 390, 395, 
426, 443, 510, 529, S39, 641, 667, 710. 

4 Jefferson’s Writings. Memorial Ed., I, 14; Letters of R. H. Lee, I, 136 ff. 

“Journals; Lingley, “Transition in Virginia,” 71. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 77 

ginians heard that the siege of Boston had begun; they heard that 
Generals Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne had arrived there to prose¬ 
cute a vigorous campaign. 

The extent of the revolution in sentiment became plain when the 
moderate Peyton Randolph took his uncompromising stand with the 
radical Jefferson, and when it began to be gossiped that the conser¬ 
vative Richard Bland had proposed that Dunmore be hanged. 6 
Williamsburg was filled with knots of patriot soldiery, who had 
come in as escorts for several of the members, and some not only of 
the soldiers but of the Burgesses wore the homespun hunting shirts 
of the western troops. When Lord Dunmore received a letter from 
General Gage informing him of the latter’s hope to capture Samuel 
Adams and Hancock, he reflected that if these two patriots were 
actually taken, the Virginians would probably seize him as a hostage 
on the other side. Moreover, he was apprehensive of the “blind 
and unreasoning fury,” which had, he said, unaccountably fallen on 
so many. At night he slipped out of town and took refuge on the 
Fowey, a man-of-war on the James. Here he had the effrontery to 
invite the House to meet him, and the Burgesses replied that his 
invitation was an impudent breach of privilege. 

But it was in North Carolina that the complete debacle of the 
Crown’s authority after Lexington first occurred. Here Governor 
Martin had been trying to cope with a situation which grew rapidly 
worse after he called a new Assembly to meet March 29, 1775, at 
New Bern, and found that the ingenious Speaker Harvey had sum¬ 
moned the second Provincial Convention to sit at the same place 
at almost the same date, April 3. 7 

This was a direct challenge to Martin, for the membership of the 
two bodies would be almost identical, and he drew up another procla¬ 
mation forbidding any one to support the Convention. It was largely 
ignored, nearly every county and borough town choosing delegates. 
In most instances they were the same men as the Assemblymen, 
though some counties elected additional members. The Convention 
and the Assembly made a quorum and organized on the same day. 
The outraged Governor Martin, who opened the latter with a warm 
denunciation of illegal gatherings, found himself mocked by the 
fact that although there were two bodies in appearance, in fact 


6 Mag. of History, III, 160; cf. 4 Amer. Archives, 465, for Washington’s view. 

7 N. C. Colonial Records, IX, 1125- 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


78 

there was but one. The Assembly had 52 members, while the 
Convention numbered 67; and every Assemblyman except one, who 
later became a noted Tory, was also a deputy to the second body. 
The two met in the same room and almost at the same time, with 
John Harvey, under the alternate name of Mr. Speaker and Mr. 
Moderator, presiding. Ordinarily the business of the Convention 
had precedence, but whenever the Governor’s messenger was an¬ 
nounced at the door, the protean Convention became the Assembly, 
the extra delegates turned into mere spectators, and His Excellency’s 
communication was gravely received. The functions of the two bodies 
were not always strictly separated, and those of the Convention alone 
had much significance. It subscribed to the Continental Association, 
reelected the former delegates to the Continental Congress, and 
strengthened and directed the work of the county committees. 8 

Governor Martin dissolved the Assembly on April 8, after a stormy 
session of four days; it had returned a defiant answer to his message 
calling on it to resist the illegal body sitting in the town. The 
Convention had adjourned the previous day. The whole episode 
showed just how dead the old instruments of government had 
become in a typically radical Colony by April, 1775. Then swiftly 
followed the denouement in their utter collapse. Martin, patheti¬ 
cally defiant to the last, called his council together, struck Harvey’s 
name from the list of magistrates, and planted a half dozen cannon 
before his palace. During a council meeting on April 24, men 
representing New Bern’s town committee, whom Martin described as 
pot-valiant, carried off the guns. That night the Governor and some 
of his followers fled in haste to Wilmington, and when the news from 
Boston further excited the Colony, they took refuge in Fort Johnston 
on the Cape Fear. 9 

The two autonomous Colonies of New England, which had no 
royal Governors to drive out, of course made an instant response to 
the call of Massachusetts for help in besieging Boston. Couriers 
with the news of Concord reached New Haven April 21, and that 
day a special session of the Connecticut legislature was called, which 

8 Governor Martin wrote Lord Dartmouth that io of the 34 countries—actually 9— 
sent no delegates, that in many others the committees arrogated the choice of dele¬ 
gates to themselves, and that in the remainder they were not chosen by one-twentieth 
the people. Martin viewed “the inhabitants of the western counties who were for the 
most part concerned in the late insurrection” as especially likely to be loyal—the Regu¬ 
lators. The proceedings of the Convention are in N. C. Col. Rees., IX, 1178-85; 
Martin’s letter idem, 1223-28; proceedings of the legislature idem, 1187-1205. 

9 E. W. Sikes, Transition of North Carolina, Johns Hopkins Studies, Series XVI, 
Nos. 10, 11. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 79 

brought the Province wholeheartedly into the conflict. Eight regi¬ 
ments were ordered enlisted from the militia, an act was passed to 
encourage the manufacture of arms and military stores, and articles 
of war were adopted. 10 Not only did the siege of Boston begin with 
2300 Connecticut troops in the line of 16,000 men, not only did a 
great share of the munitions come from Connecticut, but the credit 
for Ticonderoga belongs to her. A cordial relationship had always 
existed between Connecticut and the Vermont settlers, many of them 
Connecticut-born. At the end of April a committee consisting of 
Silas Deane and ten other patriots who knew the possibility of a 
successful attack on the post signed notes for some £800 on the 
treasury to equip the expedition. They were assured of the approval 
of the Governor and Assembly, though both were glad to be excused 
from officially authorizing the attack. It was impracticable to send 
a force from Hartford to Ticonderoga, for secrecy was essential, but 
Connecticut volunteers were among Ethan Allen’s force, and Benedict 
Arnold of Connecticut was second in command, when on May 10 
the key to the northern lakes fell. 

An important addition was made to the wartime government in 
May, the Connecticut Assembly appointing nine men to assist Gov¬ 
ernor Trumbull when it was not sitting. They were virtually a 
Council of Safety, resembling the Bay Colony’s useful body of that 
name, for their function was to supply the troops and direct their 
movements; but they were destined to a greater usefulness than any 
other body of the kind in the country. They sat until the end of the 
war—all but one of the members were neighbors of Trumbull, and 
his little store became known as the War Office—and in all held 
almost twelve hundred meetings. It was they who at the dark period 
of Valley Forge gave two agents $400,000 for the purchase of cattle 
for the starving army. 11 

Had Rhode Island possessed a Trumbull, her record might have 
been a duplicate of Connecticut’s. The steady flow of the revolu¬ 
tionary current was at this critical moment interrupted briefly, but 
only briefly, by the Toryism of the Governor. Joseph Wanton, a 
representative of one of the wealthy, distinguished families of the 

10 Public Records, XV, 15-31* , , . , _ , , 

11 The powers of this imoortant body may be noted precisely. It was to help the 

chief executive “to order and direct the marches and stations of the inhabitants en¬ 
listed and assembled for the special defense of the Colony, or any part or parts of 
them, as they shall judge necessary, and to give orders from time to time for furnish¬ 
ing and supplying said inhabitants so enlisted with every matter and thing that may 
be needful/’ Public Records, XV, 39; for early proceedings, see Idem, 84-530. 


8o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

Province, had lived for nearly seventy years under the British flag, 
and like many merchants of the thriving seaport towns, knew that a 
war would bring commercial disaster. When elected a half dozen 
years earlier as a result of a truce between the factions of the rival 
Hopkins and Ward families, he was regarded as a sterling patriot, 
and for some years his attitude was all that the progressive Whigs 
expected. But he was unwilling to go the whole road to independ¬ 
ence. At the special legislative session which met three days after 
Lexington, he watched the House uneasily while it armed the troops, 
prepared 1500 men for service elsewhere, and named a committee to 
consult with Connecticut upon defense. Greatly alarmed, the old 
Governor and three members of the upper house protested against 
these measures as likely to be fatal to the Charter and leading toward 
civil war. Yet the speaker had testified that the House had scarcely 
ever in its history shown greater unanimity. 12 

Had Wanton contented himself with a mild expostulation all might 
have been well, but when the legislature met in regular session on 
May 2 he showed an obstructive spirit. It authorized the issue of 
paper money, chose a Committee of Safety, and elected Nathanael 
Greene a brigadier-general in command of the little army. The 
inauguration of the newly-elected legislature should fully have taken 
place by this time, but Wanton showed his Toryism by blocking it. 
He asked to be excused from attending its sessions on account of 
illness, recommended a careful consideration of Lord North’s offer, 
and declared that if Rhode Island were “torn from the body 
to which we are united by our religion, liberty, laws, and commerce, 
we must bleed at every vein.” He also refused to sign the military 
commissions, or to proclaim a fast day. The House thereupon pushed 
the old executive out of the way by suspending him from office until, 
that fall, his seat was declared vacant, and the patriotic Deputy- 
Governor, Nicholas Cooke, was installed in it. Being now in un¬ 
hampered control of Rhode Island, the legislature drove the conduct 
of the war with energy. 13 

In the Colonies where the moderates and conservatives were 
strongest—that is, in all of them south of New England save Virginia 

12 For Wanton’s creditable espousal of the patriot side in the Gaspee affair, see I. B. 
Richman’s “Rhode Island,” 204 ff. 

13 Records Col. R. I., VII, 312 ff., 325 - 334 . 393 * Cooke, though capable, was given 
nothing like independent war powers; the Assembly kept them firmly in its own or its 
committees’ hands. Stephen Hopkins and Nathanael Greene early in 1775 were advocat¬ 
ing independence; see Bates, “R. I. and the Union,” 62; 4 Amer. Archives, IV, 571. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 81 


and North Carolina—the royal and proprietary governors remained 
in their seats even after Bunker Hill, but as impotent spectators of 
a rapid strengthening of the revolutionary governments and the 
fighting forces. Sir Robert Eden, of Maryland, actually managed to 
stay till the very eve of the declaration of independence. This was 
because he had always been personally popular, because a con¬ 
siderable group of Annapolis and Baltimore townsfolk and of wealthy 
planters protected him, and because he had tact enough to efface 
himself. 14 When the news of Lexington and of Dunmore’s rape of 
the powder arrived in Annapolis, the third Provincial Convention, 
with a hundred members, was sitting there. It at once demanded 
that Eden surrender the Provincial arms and munitions, and although 
the Governor expostulated, he yielded, doing so with all possible 
dignity by agreeing to hand over the military stores to certain 
colonels of the militia regularly appointed by himself, but perfectly 
trusted by the Whigs. This course, he wrote his brother rather 
uneasily, satisfied every one save perhaps “some of our infernal inde¬ 
pendents, who are in league with the Bostonians.” 

But as Eden found, henceforth the sensibilities of British officials 
were given little consideration. A month after Bunker Hill, Mary¬ 
land’s first troops set out for the seat of war, two companies of 
hardy riflemen from Frederick County, dressed in hunting shirts, 
trousers, and moccasins, and able to hit a squirrel without a rest at 
a hundred yards. The Fourth Provincial Convention, which met in 
midsummer, did everything possible to place the Province upon a 
war footing. To this end, it provided for the enlistment of every 
able-bodied effective freeman between sixteen and fifty, the organi¬ 
zation of forty companies of minute men, the purchase of munitions 
and erection of a powder mill, and the issue of $266,666 in bills of 
credit. 

The shot heard round the world did not reach South Carolina till 
May 3, but it brought that Province also into a posture for imme¬ 
diate hostilities. A meeting of its Congress was called for June 1, 
1775. Old Charles Pinckney, too loyal yet for a total break with 
England, resigned, and his place as president was taken by the rich 
merchant-planter Henry Laurens, who had just returned from a 


u Eden’s tact and popularity were more effective in restraining the radical Mary¬ 
landers than the good qualities of Governor Wentworth in New Hampshire. See the 
biography, by B. C. Steiner, “Sir Robert Eden,” John Hopkins Studies, Series XVI, 
Nos. 7, 8, 9. 


82 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


period spent in England to educate his children. Laurens stood 
midway between the moderates and the radicals, but the news of 
Lexington caused him to move toward the latter. A clash between 
the two wings at once occurred over an Association which it was 
proposed the Congress should compel all patriots to sign—a pledge 
which bound its subscribers to fight to the death in defending the 
freedom and safety of America. The moderates were overborne, and 
the Association was ordered used throughout the Province as a test; 
President Laurens, however, making an address in which he pleaded 
that the honest Whigs who refused to accept it should be treated 
with fairness and respect. The Congress proceeded to raise three 
regiments, to issue a million pounds in paper, and to appoint treasury 
commissioners, while it, like the Maryland Convention, appointed 
a Council of Safety which became the executive head of the 
government. 15 

When all pressing revolutionary business had been finished, on a 
fine afternoon in mid-June the Congress sent a committee to address 
Lieutenant-Governor Bull, at his neighboring country seat of Ashley 
Hall, in explanation of their proceedings and motives. The warship 
Scorpion , bearing the new Governor, Sir William Campbell, was off 
the coast, and as the deputation offered its paper, the Charleston 
guns saluting the incoming executive were heard. The brave Lieu¬ 
tenant-Governor, sick at heart, alleged the fact that he had now been 
supplanted in office as a reason for refusing to accept the address; 
he really was unwilling to have this token of the virtual end of the 
Crown regime come into his hands. 16 

We need not pause long over the events of the spring in New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, where the same preparations 
were taken in hand as in other Colonies. Governor Franklin wrote 
Lord Dartmouth from the first-named Province on May 6 that all 
hopes for a restoration of harmony had been defeated by the news 
of Lexington. 17 Companies were drilling everywhere, militia officers 
had resigned their connection with the Crown, and an effort had 
been made to carry away the Provincial treasury-chest and public 
records. Four days before the Governor mailed this ominous report, 

15 The Journal of the Council is in the Colls, of the S. C. Hist. Soc., Ill 35-372. 

10 See Drayton, “Memoirs of the Amer. Rev.,” I, 255 ff. 

17 Colls, of N. J. Hist. Soc., V, 445. The counties had acted promptly upon re¬ 
ceiving the news from the north. Thus Morris County on May 1 entrusted nine 
men with raising men, arms, and money, and this committee next day took all steps 
requisite for outfitting 300 troops. On May 4 Upper Freehold township subscribed 
£160 for ammunition. Lee’s “New Jersey,” II, ch. 3. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 83 


another general conference of county committeemen began at New 
Brunswick, and in view of the fighting near Boston, issued a call 
for a regular Provincial Convention at Trenton. This second body 
voted measures of military organization similar to those we have 
noticed elsewhere, though it protested its entire loyalty to the King. 
In Pennsylvania the Assembly sat within a week after the news that 
hostilities had begun, and pushed to completion certain undertakings 
which an emergency mass meeting and the city committee had already 
initiated. Troops were enlisted, a census of arms was taken, £2000 
was set aside to pay for munitions already bought, and a committee 
which included Thomson, Dickinson, and Anthony Wayne was 
charged with procuring needed stores. Lord North’s offer was 
emphatically rejected, and the delegates in Congress were instructed 
to take vigorous measures for obtaining a redress of grievances. 
Later, at the end of June, when the subject of fortifying the city and 
taking further military steps had been pressed by the radicals, the 
Assembly appointed a Committee of Safety under the chairmanship 
of Dickinson. 18 He held this post throughout the summer, when 
Dr. Franklin superseded him. 

But it was in Georgia and New York, the two laggard Provinces, 
that the effect of the first fighting in the north was most stunning, 
for in both it brought over a great number of moderate Whigs to the 
side of the radicals and encouraged the latter to a new boldness. 
The overturn in Georgia was almost amazing, for the revolutionary 
movement had seemed pitifully weak there. The effort to hold a 
Provincial Congress in January had been almost abortive, only five 
of the twelve parishes sending delegates. This rump body had 
chosen three men to the Continental Congress, but had been too 
timid to endorse the Continental Association, and its pusillanimous 
conduct, as they deemed it, had outraged the New England settlers 
of St. John’s Parish. 19 It had also angered the patriot authorities 
of Charleston, who early the next month resolved to have nothing 
to do with Georgia; whereupon St. John’s protested, set itself apart 
from the rest of the Province, and elected Dr. Lyman Hall its own 
delegate to the Continental Congress. The three other delegates did 


is Vntes and Proceedings, VI, 584 ff. Early in June Congress was impressed by a 
glittering field day of 2,000 troops in Philadelphia; Adams Familiar Letters, 61. 

^ i *the Ga. 3 Hist. sit 

have* gmL’further in cooperation with the Assembly, but that the latter after showing a 
mildly patriotic temper, was suddenly dissolved by Wright. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


84 

not go to Philadelphia in May, but sent instead a full explanation of 
the recent events in Georgia. 

Admitting that the Province seemed to have played a contemptibly 
unworthy part, they pointed out that the recent Provincial Congress 
could not call itself representative of the whole people, and that it 
lacked the strength to enforce the Association. The people of 
Savannah were not ready for non-importation. “The importers were 
mostly against any interruption, and the consumers very much di¬ 
vided. There were some of the latter virtuously for the measures; 
others tremulously against them; but more who called themselves 
neutral than either.” They had, they concluded, naturally decided 
to await the drift of events and the further measures of Congress. 

But the opening of war in New England had its natural effect 
upon the waiting Georgia neutrals. At the beginning of May the 
Assembly refused to make a quorum. Immediately afterwards the 
news of Lexington produced a burst of excitement in Savannah, in 
the midst of which the radicals took from the royal magazine a 
quarter ton of powder. 20 The King’s birthday was celebrated by 
setting up a fine liberty pole and flag, a parade, and a dinner at 
which the first toast was the King and the second American liberty. 
The enforcement of the Association was made so rigid in Savannah 
that notorious violators had to clear out at dead of night. 21 The 
patriot leaders assumed control, and a call was sent broadcast for 
the election of delegates to a new Provincial Congress to meet July 
4, 1775. In despair, Governor Wright wrote that “all law and 
government . . . here as well as elsewhere, seems now nearly at an 
end. And it has been debated whether or not to stop the courts 
and shut up the port, but this I am assured is laid aside for the 
present although very probably will be resumed hereafter.” When 
the Congress met on the date set, every parish and district was at 
last represented, and Georgia could consider herself one of the 
thirteen embattled Colonies. 

The work of this Congress, which under President Bulloch sat at 
intervals until the fall of 1776, resembled that of the like bodies 
elsewhere. 22 At its first session it elected delegates to the Conti¬ 
nental Congress, including one, the Rev. Dr. Zubly, who later proved 

20 Rev. Records of Ga., I, 66, 67. 

21 Colls, of the Ga. Hist. Soc., Ill, 183-4. Many inhabitants of Savannah and the 
surrounding country met at the Liberty Pole in that town on June 22, 1775, to elect 
a Council of Safety. Rev. Records, I, 67. 

22 Cf. C. C. Jones, “Hist, of Georgia,” II, 197 ff.; Schlesinger, 546 ff. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 85 


to be a Tory and resigned; it strengthened the executive Council 
of Safety; 23 it adopted a new Association; and it resolved upon 
raising £10,000. This so placated the other Colonies that a resolu¬ 
tion which the Continental Congress had passed, setting all Georgia 
except St. John’s outside the pale of commercial intercourse, was 
rescinded. The courts were closed during the summer, and that 
winter were placed under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Congress. 
“In short, my lord,” Wright wrote to London on September 16, 1775, 
“the whole executive power is assumed by them, and the King’s 
Governor remains little else than nominally so.” He asked to be 
taken home, since a Crown officer “has little or no business here.” 24 
The news of Lexington fell upon New York at a critical and 
interesting juncture, the moment when a Provincial Congress was 
at last taking the place of the regular legislature. When the As¬ 
sembly had met for the last time in January, 1775, with the loyalists 
still in firm control, its conduct had totally disgusted the patriots. 
One by one it had defeated every undertaking of the progressive 
members. By a vote of 15 to 9 it rejected Schuyler’s motion to thank 
the New York delegates to the first Continental Congress, and by 
17 to 9 it refused to appoint delegates to the second Congress. A 
set of much-amended resolutions was finally allowed to pass as a 
milk-and-water expression of the attitude of moderate Americans 
toward the aggressions of Parliament. These went so far as to 
speak of the punitive acts as grievances, but they asserted that the 
colonists owed the same obedience to the Crown as if they lived in 
England, and that Parliament, so long as it did not tax them without 
their consent, had a right to regulate colonial trade and to lay duties 
on American imports from foreign lands. A memorial to the King 
was adopted, admitting that some of the colonial measures “are by 
no means justified,” and begging His Majesty to regard them as 
“the honest, tho’ disorderly struggles of liberty.” Colden, rubbing 
his hands with satisfaction over these measures, wrote home through¬ 
out the first three months of the year praising the steadfastness of 
the people. 25 


[ t3 e .ed i Ta^°m«?y"eS ‘c" mrmsSs °,o 

^rad^arranleSt “o otata it'cnsivemuiSy s«Vi°fon January” UwoV'controi 

jSSI ss 


86 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Long before the Assembly broke up on April 3 the thoroughly 
disgusted radicals were taking steps to set it aside. Its refusal to 
elect delegates to Philadelphia brought the demand for a Provincial 
Congress to a head, and the Committee of Sixty ordered an elec¬ 
tion. 26 When the viva voce balloting took place early in March at 
the Exchange, a pitched battle of Whigs and Tories with staves and 
bludgeons preceded it, creating such an uproar that the choice of the 
delegates virtually fell upon the Sixty. The Congress held its first 
brief session at the Exchange on April 20-23, 1775, its forty-two 
members representing all the counties but three, though in West¬ 
chester hundreds had protested against the sending of delegates, and 
in Dutchess three fourths of the people were said to be in opposition. 
Its roster was highly creditable. It included Jay, Duane, Low, 
McDougall, Philip Livingston, and Isaac Roosevelt, from New York 
City; Philip Schuyler and Abraham Yates from Albany; George 
Clinton from Ulster, and Robert R. Livingston from Dutchess. 27 
Its chief act, however, was merely the choice of delegates to Phila¬ 
delphia, 

Before the Congress had adjourned there came the news of fight¬ 
ing, and after that events crowded rapidly upon each other. Busi¬ 
ness was suspended on April 23, the followers of “King” Sears and 
John Lamb paraded the town with drums and colors, the city armory 
was broken open, arms were distributed, drilling began, and the Sons 
of Liberty took over the local government. 28 For the temporary 
administration of the city a Committee of One Hundred was chosen 


unjustifiable, but begged His Majesty to consider them “the honest, tho* disorderly 
struggles of liberty.” Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly, 1775, 109 ff.; 
see also 4 Amer. Archives, I, 1188-91; Docs. Rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., VIII, 532, 543; 
Colden’s “Letter-Books,” II, 381-400. 

28 Colden’s “Letter-Books,” II, 389-90. The proposal to call this body came from 
the Whigs alone, the loyalists opposing it, but not daring to show enough energy to 
defeat it. 

27 See Journals N. Y. Prov. Congress. The city and county of New York cast four 
votes in the Congress, Albany County three, and the other counties two each. Philip 
Livingston was chosen president. In New York city and county the delegates were 
elected by the voters on the regular poll lists; in Albany county by the local committee 
of correspondence; and in Ulster by the committee of the towns and precincts 

28 See William Smith’s Ms. Diary, N. Y. Public Library, entry of April 29, for a 
vivid account of the excitement of the city, the buzzing of the taverns, and the stop¬ 
page of the courts. Colden noted that the agitation of the radicals had been rising to 
a climax. “Every species of public and private resentment was threatened to terrify 
the inhabitants of this Province if they continued disunited from the others. The 
certainty of losing all the debts due from the other colonies, which are very consider¬ 
able, and every other argument of private interest that could influence the merchants, 
or anyone, was industriously circulated. The minds of the people in this city were 
kept in constant agitation by riots and attempts to stop the transports loading here 
with stores . . . for the army.” Then the news of Lexington was “spread with horrid 
and aggravating circumstances. The moment of consternation and anxiety was seized, 
the people were assembled, and that scene of violence and disorder was begun which 
has entirely prostrated the powers of government. . . .” “Letter-Books,” II, 401-02; 
May 3, 1775. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 87 


on May 5, at the instance chiefly of Jay and Duane, and it received 
implicit obedience from the patriots. This body contained many 
conservative members, its head was Low, and more than one third 
of its number was usually absent, but under it New York City 
drove forward steadily into the Revolution. It assured the people 
of London that the inhabitants were as one man in the cause of 
liberty, took arms and munitions under strict control, and surveyed 
the ground for city fortifications. 29 Suspected loyalists found them¬ 
selves under sharp surveillance. All over the Province after Lexing¬ 
ton the enforcement of the non-importation rule was stiffened; 
within a short time some 12,000 persons had agreed to it, while 
only about half as many refused. 

Almost immediately the second Provincial Congress was held 
(May 22, 1775), and sat, with short interruptions, for almost a 
year. It was chosen, like the first, in response to an appeal from 
the New York City committee, addressed to the county committees 
or prominent citizens, and it again represented eleven counties out 
of fourteen. The large conservative element for a time prevented 
the formulation of any aggressive policy. When in June Governor 
Tryon returned from a business trip to England, it happened that he 
arrived at Sandy Hook on the very day upon which Washington 
passed through the city to take command at Cambridge. Wash¬ 
ington was met with a cautious address by the Provincial Congress, 
even the most radical of whose members still professed nominal 
loyalty to the Crown, while the mayor, corporation, and most 
influential inhabitants received Tryon with marked cordiality. 30 
But by the time Bunker Hill was fought the Province was being 
unmistakably committed to the Revolution under its own Congress. 
In June steps were taken to build up a military force, and were 
followed by the familiar measures. Officers were commissioned, 
ammunition collected, an issue of paper money voted, and the 
Tories dealt with harshly. A committee of safety was appointed in 
July, and in September Tryon took refuge on a man-of-war in the 
harbor. 


29 After a time the city committee surrendered its functions to the Provincial Con- 
ress. For their activities just after Lexington see 4 American Archives, II, 5 2 9 535 , 

5 » 7 o^;U II hope 5 d 2 Tryon would be more liberal than Colden. Colden’s authority had 
een paralyzed and he admitted that the Province was in a state of “anarchy and 
an fusion.” “A committee has assumed the whole powers of government, he said, 
stiring to his Long Island farm. “Letter-Books, II, 4o4, 406. 


88 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Roughly speaking, the transition between Colonies and States was 
now more than half completed; the colonists stood between two 
worlds in midsummer of 1775, the one quite dead, the other in its 
birth throes. From the Continental point of view, independence was 
a year distant, but from the point of view of the single Province, it 
was already being grasped in at least ten Colonies of the thirteen. 
John Adams wrote his wife some months later that he firmly believed 
that no Province which had assumed a government of the people 
would ever give it up. There was something unnatural and odious 
in a government a thousand leagues distant, he said, something sweet 
in a government of their own choice; and a perception of this fact 
was just beginning to steal over multitudes of patriots. In New 
York the loyalist Councillor William Smith was impressed by the 
attitude of some of his colleagues at the first Council session after 
Lexington. “J aunce y apart told me he now saw the end of the 
quarrel,” he wrote in his diary; “that the union was complete 
against taxation, and no power in Europe was strong enough to 
subdue a country three thousand miles off.” 31 

It remains for us only to trace two movements—the rapid assump¬ 
tion of a fixed and fairly well developed form by the rudimentary 
revolutionary governments, and the triumph in the several Colonies 
of the demand for a formal assertion of independence. 

I. Patriot Agencies Take Regular Form 

For the American people to live under the rule of agencies which 
had an indefinite tenure, a vague authority, and an irregular mode 
of functioning was impossible, while to try to carry on war through 
such agencies was preposterous. A process of regularizing the new 
Provincial authorities manifested itself throughout the continent 
during the spring and summer of 1775. The way was being paved 
for the writing of Constitutions and the full emergence of new States. 

This process is most fully illustrated by the four Provinces of 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and North Carolina, 
representing each section. Massachusetts naturally led the way. 
The flash of muskets at Concord and Lexington lit up the future 
sufficiently for men to see that they would long be estranged from 
England, and that the emergency government furnished by the 

81 Adams’s “Familiar Letters,” 174; Smith’s Ms. Diary, N. Y. Public Library. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 89 

Congress and Committee of Safety must be improved. Even before 
the fighting, a conflict of opinion had manifested itself upon the 
subject. The great majority favored the simplest possible course. 
If the Provincial Congress was truly the legal continuation of the 
General Court, why not simply resume government under the old 
Charter? The recent British alterations, the patriots had always 
argued, were null and void, inasmuch as the Charter was a compact 
which could be changed only by the two parties in agreement. A 
number of citizens wished to go a little farther; they proposed 
revising the old charter to suit the popular taste. Finally, the 
radicals urged a wholly new framework of government. 32 The course 
followed was the first. A request was made to the Continental 
Congress for an authorization to exercise the powers of government 
in some more satisfactory form, and that body in June recommended 
that an Assembly and Council be chosen in the old fashion to take 
charge of affairs, the Governor’s chair being regarded as vacant 
until the King appointed another incumbent. 

In midsummer of 1775, therefore, Massachusetts slipped easily 
back under her Charter of 1691, now administered wholly by the 
people. A house was elected on the former basis, almost immediately 
to be enlarged, and it in turn chose a Council of twenty-eight. The 
ballot was given all freeholders who owned realty worth 40 shillings 
a year, or other property worth £40. It would have been well if the 
General Court had arrogated to itself the right to name an acting 
Governor, for though the Council tried to exercise the executive 
functions of a civil character, it was too unwieldy a body to move 
effectively. This interim government went into operation when the 
new legislature met at the safe inland village of Watertown on July 
19, 1775, and was destined to endure the surprising space of five 
years. 33 

New Hampshire showed somewhat greater boldness. After Lex¬ 
ington her hardy farmers had no intention of allowing any of the 
old departments to remain outside their control. The Congress 

32 Cushing, 164-65, quotes Joseph Warren and Thomas Young as writing as early as 
September, 1774, that the mass of the people were for resuming the old Charter and 
organizing a government immediately. But in May, 1775, Joseph Warren wrote 
Samuel Adams that they awaited the advice of the Continental Congress. “We cannot 
think ” he added, “that you will advise us to take up that form established by the last 
Charter, as it contains in it the seeds of despotism, and would, in a few years, bring 
us again into the same unhappy situation in which we now are.” See Journals Prov. 
Congress, 219-220. The advice of Congress is in 4 Amer. Archives, II, 1845. 

33 Journals Prov. Congress, 359; for John Adams’s warm praise of the second legis¬ 
lature elected under the revised Charter, see Works, IX, 392. 


90 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


which sat in May, 1775, had no sooner met than it sent a committee 
to Portsmouth for the records of government and turned them over 
to its clerk as a new secretary of state, while it obtained from the 
former treasurer his accounts and public moneys, and gave them to 
a new officer. 34 The Committee of Safety which was appointed on 
May 20 served as an executive, especially in military affairs. Still, 
the people had an uncomfortable sense that they were without a real 
government, and after Governor Wentworth fled they demanded 
that their representatives take the subject in hand. The result was 
that in November a committee brought in a plan for electing a new 
Congress empowered to establish some form of administration. 
Every legal taxpayer should have a vote; every man possessing realty 
worth £200 should be eligible to a seat, and eighty-nine representa¬ 
tives should be apportioned among the counties by population. 
For this apportionment a special census was taken. Much to the 
disgust of the smallest communities, no town was allowed a separate 
representative unless it had a hundred freeholders, while some larger 
towns were given two seats, and Portsmouth three. When the 
fifth Provincial Congress met on Dec. 21, 1775, under this plan, it 
proceeded to design a rough Constitution. 35 

This framework, adopted January 5, 1776, may be briefly de¬ 
scribed. The Congress received the name and authority of a House 
of Representatives; it was to choose twelve freeholders, apportioned 
among the counties by population, to be a Council; and the Council 
was to elect its own president, and to exercise equal powers with the 
House except in the framing of money bills. Most civil officers were 
to be elected by the two houses. If the dispute with England did 
not close in 1776, the two houses were to prescribe a method by 
which the Council should be elected by the counties. A new legis¬ 
lature was to be chosen at the close of each year, in a manner to be 
determined by the Council and Assembly. In short, the little nor¬ 
thern Province set up a government in which the legislature was 
almost absolute, and limited in power only by being chosen anew 
yearly. No mention was made of a Governor or judiciary, and 
the president of the Council was given no more authority than the 
Speaker of the House. A Portsmouth oligarchy of men like Judge 
Weare, Squire John Wentworth, and Dr. Thornton had governed 

34 Proceedings scattered through N. H. Prov. Papers, VII, 468-669. The proceed¬ 
ings of the Congress which met in April are in Idem, 452-67. 

38 Stackpole’s “Hist. N. H.,” II, ch. 5; N. H. Prov. Papers, VII, 690-710. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 91 

the Colony so far as it could in the old days, and the people were 
glad to see the legislature supreme in the new. 

No other Province went quite so far before the close of 1775. 
We have seen that in New Jersey, as in various other Colonies, the 
first revolutionary legislature was a motley array of county delega¬ 
tions, some large and some small. But before the middle of August 
in 1775, the increased gravity of the crisis caused the Provincial 
government to draw up what was in effect a rough sketch of govern¬ 
ment. The qualified voters of each county, who had to be worth 
£50, were directed to hold a meeting the next month, and choose 
not more than five deputies to a new Congress which was to sit 
October 3 at Trenton. At the same time they were to elect their 
county committees of correspondence and inspection, while in March 
yearly the people of each township were to choose a committee to 
assist the county authorities. 36 The crown officers, who had been 
relaxing their grip on the administration, now almost wholly lost it, 
while the militia were organized on a Province-wide scale, and paper 
money was issued to pay for outfitting the troops. Since each county 
sent its full quota of five members to the Congress which met the 
spring of 1776, it was possible to vote there by individuals, instead 
of counties, a great improvement. New Jersey’s Committee of 
Safety had meanwhile been appointed, with the usual executive 
powers, in the early autumn of 1775. This was the normal type of 
governmental development in 1775. 

But it was North Carolina which in the late summer of 1775 
established the most elaborate provisional government on the conti¬ 
nent, a carefully graded system of committees. The radicalism of 
the individualistic, aggressive small farmers had been well expressed 
by the militia companies of Mecklenburg County, which held a meet¬ 
ing at Charlotte on May 31, and resolved that all royal commissions 
were null, that the government of each county was now vested in its 
revolutionary legislature under the Continental Congress, and that 
the county ought to form at least a temporary government of its 
own. After Governor Martin had fled, the demand for a systematic 
administration became irresistible, and was met by a Provincial 
Congress which Samuel Johnston called at Hillsborough, in the heart 

38 “By these means the government was to a great extent taken out of the hands of 
the officers holding under the King; and by the cooperation of most of the people the 
committees thus chosen arrested and imprisoned persons believed to be disaffected to 
measures of resistance . . . ; and they became, in most parts of the Colony, the 
governing power.” Elmer, “Const, and Govt. N. J.” ch. 2; born in 1793, Elmer had 
talked with many Revolutionary survivors. 


92 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of the regulators’ country, beginning August 21. 37 The Province was 
divided into six military and judicial districts, each to be controlled 
during the recesses of the Congress by a committee of thirteen, 
chosen by the district’s delegates in the Congress. Above these six 
committees there was placed a grand Provincial Council, composed 
also of thirteen members—two from each district, with a thirteenth 
appointed by the Congress—which during the recesses was to com¬ 
mand the troops, draw on the treasury at will, and in fact do anything 
for the public security which did not contravene an act of the 
legislature. The Provincial Congress of course retained paramount 
powers. By this governmental plan the direction of affairs was well 
centralized, and the county committees, which had indulged in some 
shameful excesses against the Tories, were brought under restraint. 
War measures, too, could be more effectively pushed. 38 

The development of the revolutionary government in Maryland 
during 1775 is also sufficiently interesting to repay examination. 
During the summer it was arranged that each county should elect 
five delegates annually to the Provincial Convention (four had been 
the number in the old popular chamber), and that when this body 
was not sitting, authority should be vested in a Council of Safety 
of sixteen men, half from each shore of the Chesapeake. Thus the 
revolutionary legislature, previously a gathering of uncertain size, 
was placed on almost the same basis as the House under the old 
regime—a little larger, that was all. At the same time two treasurers, 
one for each shore, were appointed. 

The Provincial Convention heard judicial cases, presented by 
the county committees, thus acting as a supreme court, and in one 
instance it banished a sheriff and confiscated £500 of his property. 
Each county committee was instructed to appoint a board to license 
or refuse licenses for civil suits. Governor Eden remained virtually 


37 No fewer than 214 delegates had been elected, representing every county and 
borough town. The Convention sat for three weeks; N. C. Col. Records, X 164-220. 
It ordered 4,000 troops raised, and sent missions to plead with the former Regulators 
and Scotch Highlanders. The plan of temporary government was devised by a 
committee of 46. 

V TT See A J’ S< Bassett > “Const. Beginnings of N. C.,” Johns Hopkins Studies, Series 
XII. Among the members of the first Provincial Council were Cornelius Harnett, 
who had been in public life since 1730, Thomas Person, Willie and Thomas Jones, 
Abner Nash, and Samuel Ashe—an able roster. But the government proved wretchedly 
poor. The Provincial Council, which did not have to meet oftener than four times a 
year, and when it did meet sat only a few days, made an inadequate executive. The 
district committees, also meeting at wide intervals, were equally weak. The county 
and town committees, while less irresponsible than before, were by no means rendered 
fully trustworthy. Not one of the governmental agencies knew the precise extent of 
its powers. Naturally, the demand for a better framework of administration grew 
constantly. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 93 

undisturbed, and his nominal powers were still extensive, for provin¬ 
cial officers yet held their commissions from him, while the patriot 
leaders counselled outward obedience to his administration. But 
with his usual tact, he avoided a collision with the revolutionary 
agencies. We find him interceding with the committee of Ann 
Arundel county to obtain a mitigation of a harsh sentence upon a 
scow which brought, along with seventy indentured servants, a 
cargo of porter, coal, and cheese. The sentence was that the ship 
should put back to England, servants and all, but Eden obtained the 
admission of the immigrants. 39 

In most other Colonies the county committees were at least given 
closer coordination and clearer method by the councils of safety, 
which became feverishly busy the latter half of 1775. This was the 
fact in Pennsylvania, where the Committee of Safety was appointed 
June 30. The Virginia Convention elected its Committee of Safety, 
an executive junta of eleven members, on August 17, 1775, and at 
the same time undertook vigorous governmental measures, establish¬ 
ing a permanent provincial army, voting £350,000 in treasury notes-, 
and laying taxes upon a considerable variety of objects. South 
Carolina had earlier chosen thirteen men as a Committee of Safety. 
As for Georgia, so tardy in entering the revolutionary movement, 
she now showed a highly creditable enterprise. Early in the summer 
her Provincial Congress established a committee of intelligence, and 
conferred upon the Council of Safety (created June 22) full recess 
powers of government, while near the end of the year it appointed a 
committee of fifteen to sit quarterly in Savannah as a court of appeal. 
Before the year 1775 closed the Council of Safety had been organ¬ 
ized as a body sitting almost continuously, with George Walton as 
president, and swaying the widest authority. It was the real gov¬ 
ernment, enforcing the nonimportation agreement and the sus¬ 
pension of horse-racing, cock-fighting, and gaming. 40 

As the Colonies thus passed under temporary governments of a 
rudimentary form, nearly all the remaining British officials either 
departed or became virtual prisoners. Governor Wright of Georgia, 
without money, dignity, or authority, was glad to seize an oppor¬ 
tunity early in 1776 to escape on board a British ship cruising off 
the coast, and the Georgians were glad to see him go. Lord William 

39 J. A. Silver, “Provisional Govt, of Md., 1774-1777,” Johns Hopkins Studies, 
Series XIII, No. 10, ch. 1; B. C. Steiner, “Life of Sir Robert Eden,” ch. 10, 11. 

*° Steven’s “Hist, of Ga.,” II, 121, 127. 


94 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Campbell of South Carolina had taken refuge on a warship the 
previous September, and thence had dissolved the Commons House, 
thus ending its one hundred and fifteen years of history. He was 
well liked and well connected, for he had married one of the most 
aristocratic daughters of the Colony, a young lady with a dower of 
£5o,ooo. 41 His departure disturbed the conservative South Caro¬ 
linians, who still hoped for a reconciliation, and the Charleston 
General Committee asked him to return, but he refused. Farther 
to the north, the only governors left in their capitals when the year 
1775 closed were Eden of Maryland, John Penn of Pennsylvania, 
and Franklin of New Jersey, all of whom were by now totally 
impotent. 

Penn, who more than half sympathized with the revolting colonists, 
was never expelled from the country. Franklin remained quietly in 
Perth Amboy, pacing his garden with increasing anxiety until in 
March, 1776, Lord Stirling with some patriot troops rode into the 
town and made him a prisoner in his house, taking his parole not 
to escape. In June the Provincial Congress ordered his arrest, 
for he had been corresponding with the British authorities, and he 
was soon sent up to East Windsor, Connecticut, for safety. But it 
was the position of Governor Eden which was the most remarkable. 42 
He stayed on in Annapolis; though he deplored the crisis, he lived 
comfortably; and though he called the Council of Safety “a real and 
oppressive tyranny,” he made no overt attempt to oppose it. In 
March, 1776, the interception of a letter sent him by Lord George 
Germaine showed that he had been in communication with England, 
and led the Continental Congress to ask the Council of Safety for 
an immediate seizure of the Governor and his papers. But this the 
Council, as anxious as the South Carolinians to maintain the osten¬ 
sible forms of the old government, refused to grant. 43 Not until May 
did the considerate Provincial Convention go so far even as to de¬ 
clare that the public tranquility required Eden’s departure, which 
should be allowed with all his personal property. He lingered on 
until June 24, when he left Annapolis in the frigate Fowey, but 
without his effects, as the ship harbored some deserters, and his 

41 McCrady, “S. C. Under the Royal Govt.,” 709. 

42 B. C. Steiner, “Life of Sir Robert Eden,” ch. 11. 

43 It declared that it could not act without the instructions of the Maryland Con¬ 
vention; and asserted that “ ’tis the peace and happiness of the Province we wish to 
preserve, and we are persuaded that it will be best done by keeping up the ostensible 
form, of our chartered government.” 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 95 

possessions were detained on the wharf in an effort to compel their 
surrender. 

II. Character of the Nascent Governments 

In one_res pect these simple provisional governments of 1775 were-v 
disappointing to some progressive thinkers. They showed a powerful 
tendency to follow the old colonial practise with respect to property 
qualifications for suffrage and the inequitable representation of 
sectional divisions. The time was too hectic for any innovations 
beyond those dictated by the plainest expediency. Jn^ Virginia and~~ 
Maryland, for example, only men qualified to vote for the former 
legislators were now permitted to help choose the Provincial Con¬ 
ventions, and the qualification included possession of at least twenty- 
five settled acres in Virginia, and fifty acres (or £40) in Maryland. 
In both Colonies, again, all counties were granted uniform repre¬ 
sentation—the little tidewater Colonies of a small planter popula¬ 
tion in Virginia sent two delegates just as did the large western 
counties filled with small farmers. Throughout America the colo¬ 
nists were inclined, as English-speaking peoples always are, to build 
their new political institutions upon the old. 

Nevertheless, certain distinct advances were being made in every 
section of the continent. We meet them during 1775 in New Hamp¬ 
shire and Massachusetts, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in North 
and South Carolina; Massachusetts, for example, gave every settle¬ 
ment of thirty or more freeholders a seat in the General Court. 44 
In the two northernmost Colonies many towns were given a represen¬ 
tation they had not previously enjoyed. In New Jersey, by a vote 
of five counties to four in the Provincial Congress, the old freehold 
qualification for the ballot was abolished, and anyone worth £50 
was granted the right of suffrage. In Pennsylvania, as we shall see, 
large new elements, including many immigrants not born under the 
British flag and previously debarred by a naturalization requirement, 
were admitted to the polls, while the representation of the western 
counties in the revolutionary legislature was made much fairer than 
in the old Assembly. 

Previous to the Revolution, no North Carolinian was allowed to 

44 This was done by an enactment of the July session, 1775; Acts and Laws of that 
year, p. 4. In passing it the legislature took occasion to attack the practise in colonial 
days of incorporating certain towns without giving them the right of representation, 
saying that this was contrary both to common right and the charter. Thus was a large 
population, especially in the west, gratified by a notable reform. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


96 

vote unless he owned fifty acres. Naturally, in choosing members to 
the Provincial Convention the Whig leaders did not care to incur 
needless enmity by denying a voice to poor but zealous patriots. 
They wooed every element in the Colony—the disgruntled Regu¬ 
lators, the loyal Scotch Highlanders, and so on—and they did not 
forget the landless. When the provisional government of the late 
summer of 1775 was instituted, the suffrage was restricted to free¬ 
holders, but without stipulation as to the size of their estates. Al¬ 
most everywhere the Revolution opened up a hope of political 
participation to men who had been denied it. The voteless mechanics 
of New York and Charleston, the Virginia shopkeeper, servant, or 
tenant, and the unnaturalized German of Philadelphia, wanted the 
ballot; while the frontier farmers wanted a representation which 
was totally denied them in South Carolina, and partly denied in 
Pennsylvania. These desires were among the springs which gave 
the revolutionary movement its irresistible power. 

South Carolina admirably illustrates the difficulty of instituting 
a completely liberal system, and the inevitability of compromise. 
In arranging for the first Congress the question of representation 
was found perplexing. The populous upland country would expect 
to be represented, but as it had never been given membership in the 
Assembly, there were no fixed precedents. The only units of appor¬ 
tionment available were the four great judicial districts erected above 
the “fall line” a few years earlier—Cheraws, Camden, Orangeburgh, 
and Ninety-Six. The Charleston committee seized upon these divi¬ 
sions and decided that in the Provincial Congress Charleston should 
have thirty delegates, each parish six, and the four districts ten 
apiece. The upland country was thus allotted only 40 delegates out 
of 184. Yet at this time it had much more than half the population 
of the Province, even counting the slaves, who were far more numer¬ 
ous in the lowlands than elsewhere. An Assembly committee in 1769 
had estimated that it contained three fourths of the white people. 
Unquestionably the lowlands did not believe that the disproportion 
was so great, while they also believed in the principle that wealth, 
of which they had the great preponderance, ought to be well repre¬ 
sented. As for the up-country farmers, they had so long endured a 
virtual exclusion from the legislature that they were glad to win 
any concession. But an unjust precedent, destined to be effective 
generation after generation, and to be a source of discord until 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 97 

Ben Tillman’s time, was set in this limited apportionment to the 
rugged majority of the interior. 45 

The principal element excluded from the new governments, how¬ 
ever, as the British executives were rowed to the nearest warships, 
and one regular legislature after another flickered out, was the ultra¬ 
conservative element—the Tories and those Whigs whom John 
Adams called timid, fearful, and skittish. The Tories showed appre¬ 
hension wherever they were in a minority, inertia where they had a 
majority. A few attempts at Tory organization were made in the 
uplands of the Carolinas, on the western shore of Maryland, and in 
several New York counties, notably Albany and Westchester, but 
as a whole they were abortive. In the old Provincial Assemblies 
the conservatives had some opportunity to make themselves heard. 
But in the South not one of these legislatures met after those of 
South Carolina and Virginia broke up in June, 1775; in the North, 
outside the proprietary Colonies, none met after that of New Jersey 
adjourned in November. 

The tendency of the conservatives was to abstain sullenly from 
participation in the choice of the Provincial Congresses and local 
revolutionary committees even where they would have been allowed 
to enter. But one Congress after another during the summer of 
1775 drew up a test-oath or Association. That of Maryland pledged 
its signers to repel force by force, while it promised adherence to 
the new revolutionary agencies in a section which significantly set 
them upon a parity with the old civil government. That of South 
Carolina declared that all persons who refused to subscribe would 
be regarded as enemies to the liberty of the Colonies, a clause which 
Henry Laurens, always a defender of freedom of thought, coura¬ 
geously denounced. 46 

In the Colony where the Tories were strongest, New York, they 
were for a time mercilessly disciplined by the Provincial Congress. 
In August this body decreed that any loyalist who gave information 

46 Schaper, “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina.” Attention being 
centred mainly on relations with England, this injustice did not arouse much imme¬ 
diate resentment. Note what the contemporary annalist Ramsay says of South Carolina 
in 1775 (“Hist, of S. C.,” I, 251): “Legislative, executive, and judicial powers were 
insensibly transferred from their usual channels to a Provincial Congress, Council of 
Safety, and subordinate committees. . . . The. power of these bodies was undefined; 
but by common consent it was comprehended in the old Roman maxim: ‘To take care 
that the commonwealth should receive no damage.’ The ardor of the people and their 
jealousy of the designs of Great Britain, gave the force of laws to their determinations. 
The voice of an approving country gave efficiency to the proceedings of the com¬ 
mittees.” 

46 See S. C. Hist, and Genealog. Mag., VIII, 142, for Laurens’s address. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


98 

to the enemy should be punished by the local committee; those who 
gave supplies to the enemy were to be fined double the value 
of the goods and jailed; those who denied the authority of the Con¬ 
gress were to be disarmed, and if they persisted, imprisoned. A 
few weeks later an order went out for the seizure of the arms of all 
who failed to swear their friendship to the American cause. Many 
outrages followed, and intense bitterness was generated. Just a 
year previously McDougall had cautioned the Massachusetts dele¬ 
gates, en route to Philadelphia, not to hint in New York City at 
war or independence, for the result would be disastrous. Many 
men were beginning to think of non-intercourse as a peace measure, 
he said, and would oppose it if it were called a war measure. Many 
others hated the “levelling” democracy of the Yankees and feared 
it would gain a foothold; a third element was imbued with an Epis¬ 
copalian prejudice against Congregational New England; and a 
large mercantile party wanted continued commerce and amity with 
England. 47 Now in the fall of 1775 all these loyalist groups were 
held in submission, and the radicals spoke frankly of the possibility 
of independence. But a large and powerful section of the population, 
in both the city and rural counties, awaited only the British invasion 
to rally to the royal standard. 

There were fewer Tories in Pennsylvania, and more of the ex¬ 
tremely cautious Whigs typified by John Dickinson. John Adams 
tells us that when many citizens there “began to see that independ¬ 
ence was approaching, they started back.” It was in Pennsylvania 
that the final struggle between conservatives and radicals was most 
protracted, most intense, and most disastrous in its after-effects 
upon the patriot resistance to Great Britain. 

We have seen that Pennsylvania came spiritedly to the aid of 
New England after the passage of the Boston Port Act, that a 
Provincial Conference was at once convoked, and that an energetic 
network of county committees was created. After Lexington, we 
have also noted, the Assembly cooperated vigorously with the Phila¬ 
delphia and other committees in the ordinary measures of military 
preparation. The great question was whether the Assembly should 
be allowed to continue at the helm, as in Connecticut and Rhode 
Island, or whether it should be pushed aside by a Provincial Con¬ 
gress, as in most Colonies. For the Assembly was decidedly con- 

47 Adams’s “Works,” II, 350. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 99 

servative, while the Provincial Congress would be as radical as 
progressives like Reed and Bryan could desire. John Dickinson, 
born to great wealth and of a Quaker family, educated in England, 
deeply versed in the cool philosophy of law, and as moderate in 
temperament as Samuel Adams was bold and ardent, was the fore¬ 
most defender of the Assembly’s leadership, and was supported by 
Charles Thomson, Robert Morris, and James Wilson. Thomson 
has declared that caution was indispensable: 48 

A great majority of the Assembly was composed of men in the Proprietary and 
Quaker interest, who [though] heretofore opposed to each other were now uniting, 
the one from motives of policy, the other from principles of religion. To press 
matters was the sure way of cementing that union, and thereby raising a powerful 
party in the state against the cause of America. Whereas, by prudent management, 
and an improvement of occurrences, as they happened, there was reason to hope that 
the Assembly, and consequently the whole Province, might be brought into the dis¬ 
pute, without any considerable opposition. And from past experience it was evident 
that though the people of Pennsylvania are cautious and backward in entering into 
measures, yet when they are engaged none are more firm, resolute, and persevering. 

Throughout 1774 the Assembly was still fully in control of 
the government, with entire popular confidence. The people and 
legislators were at one in abhorring extreme measures. The Assembly 
met a fortnight after the Continental Congress opened on September 
5, and when Congress broke up near the end of the following 
month, tendered it a dinner at the City Tavern, then reckoned the 
finest hostelry in America. At the dinner, as John Adams relates, 
“a sentiment was given—‘May the sword of the parent never be 
stained with the blood of her children.’—Two or three broadbrims 
were over against me at the table. One of them said, This is not 
a toast but a prayer; come, let us join in it.’ And they took their 
glasses accordingly.” Adams also tells us that when the resolution 
of October 10, approving Boston’s resistance to the late acts of Par¬ 
liament, was passed in Congress, the resolution whose tone did so 
much to harden the heart of George III, T saw the tears gush into 
the eyes of the old, grave, pacific Quakers of Pennsylvania.” 

One passage of his diary lets us into the secret of a considerable 
amount of the Quaker dislike of New England radicalism. One 
evening he, with Hopkins, and Ward of Rhode Island, and other 
New Englanders, were invited by some Quakers to a meeting at 
Carpenter’s Hall. They found it crowded; and the leading Friends, 
seated with their large beaver hats on, informed them that they 
wished to discuss certain complaints received from Baptists and 

48 Thomson Papers, N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 1878, 280-81. 


100 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Quakers in Massachusetts, relative to restrictions upon freedom of 
conscience there. Rich old Isaac Pemberton spoke at length upon 
the obstacles to Continental union in any such religious discrimina¬ 
tion. John Adams flushed with anger. The suspicion leaped to his 
mind that Pemberton was “endeavouring to avail himself of this 
opportunity to break up the Congress, or at least to withdraw the 
Quaker and the governing part of Pennsylvania from us; for, at that 
time, by means of a most unequal representation, the Quakers had 
a majority in the House of Assembly.” But he mastered his resent¬ 
ment, and made a tactful defense of the Massachusetts laws, which 
Cushing and Samuel Adams supported. 49 

Yet even John Adams in the fall of 1774 trusted that the Assembly 
would maintain a firm Whig stand. Elections were held at the 
beginning of October, and when the forty members for the twelve 
counties and the city met, it was found they included such able men 
as Dickinson, Wayne, Ross, Mifflin, and Thomson. They unani¬ 
mously approved the report of the Pennsylvania delegates in the 
Continental Congress, and reappointed substantially the same dele¬ 
gation. 50 The following March a majority of the forty showed their 
sturdy Whiggism when they received from Governor Penn a message 
expressing the belief that all grievances should be humbly represented 
to his Majesty by the various colonial assemblies, not through a 
general Congress. The Assembly voted a defiant answer, defending 
Congressional action, 22 to 15. Joseph Galloway, the most promi¬ 
nent Pennsylvania Tory, led the opposition, which consisted of all 
Bucks County members, three in four of those from Lancaster 
County, and half the Philadelphia County delegation, but Thomson, 
Mifflin and other soberly progressive men were too much for him. 51 
Above all, when the news of Lexington arrived, as we have seen, the 
Assembly acted with surprising ardor and resolution. Dickinson, 
like such other conservatives as Rutledge and Jay, was a man of 
spirit, who roused instantly when his countrymen were attacked. He 
was the foremost leader in the legislature, and when it appointed a 


49 Adams’s “Works,” II, 398-400. 

60 A second provincial conference was called by the Philadelphia committee of safety 
!ate in 1774. The principal objects were set forth as a stiffening of the enforcemeii 
ot the non-importation association, and the stimulation of domestic production. Reei 
presided over the brief five-day session. As yet no really warlike measures were unde 
consideration; people were discussing enterprises which implied a faith in continue 
peace, such as the bridging of the Schuylkill. Votes and Proceedings Pa H o 
Representatives, VI, 573; “Stille’s “Life of Dickinson,” I, 150; Reed’s “Reed,” ] 

51 Votes and Proceedings, VI, 577; March 9, 1775. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT ioi 


Committee of Public Safety (June 30), he was made chairman. So 
effectually did he and others labor that troops by the thousand were 
soon under arms. When the Assembly met on September 20, 1775, 
following a recess, it was pleased to hear from him that the Province 
was more than half prepared for war. He himself was colonel of the 
first regiment raised, and so ranking officer for all Pennsylvania. 

But throughout the summer of 1775 the atmosphere of Pennsyl¬ 
vania had been growing more electric. A domestic storm was brew¬ 
ing, as those could perceive who stopped to look and listen attentively. 
The tension was by no means caused by the unwillingness of much 
of the Quaker population to take up arms; its principal source lay 
in the anger and consternation aroused by the radical hints of 
approaching independence. Men like Dickinson were willing to 
fight to their last drop of blood, men like Morris to spend their 
last penny, in defense of their rights, but the idea of breaking from 
England they abhorred. A great number of these moderates began 
to take fright during the summer; they were thorough patriots when 
it was a question of defending America within the Empire, but they 
did not want to see her thrown outside the Empire. They were 
vigorously supported by Quakers conscientiously opposed to war. 52 

Amid his multifarious Provincial duties, Dickinson was laboring 
throughout the summer in the Continental Congress to promote 
reconciliation with England. He prepared the second petition to 
the King, adopted by Congress in July, 1775. Thomson tells us that 
it was necessary to make this experiment, for “without it it would 
have been impossible to have persuaded the bulk of the people of 
Pennsylvania that a humble petition drawn up without those clauses 
against which the Ministry and Parliament had taken exception in 
the former petition, would not have met with a favorable reception.” 

The debate on the document aroused a violent animosity between 
Dickinson and the New England delegates. John Adams and Sulli¬ 
van made speeches in opposition, taking little pains to conceal their 
opinion that America ought already to have destroyed all the British 
commissions, to have drawn up a Continental constitution, formed a 
navy, and arrested every crown officer. Dickinson, in a towering 


62 The Ouakers were a serious problem to military authorities. On grounds of belief, 
be more orthodox refused to give direct assistance to fighters in any form. Since 
lany who were not Quakers objected to making heavy sacrifices if the prosperous 
riends were not to lift a finger, the Committee of Safety recommended to the Assem- 
ly that all able-bodied citizens be made liable to military service except the con- 
cientious objectors, who should be required to pay a fixed sum in lieu of it. This 
ras Franklin’s idea. Votes and Proceedings, VI, 601. 


102 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


rage, one day met Adams in the hallway of Congress. “Look ye!” 
he burst out, “If you don’t concur with us in our pacific system, I 
and a number of us will break off from you in New England, and 
we will carry on the opposition by ourselves in our own way.” 
Adams, finding himself in “a happy temper,” was able to answer 
coolly. But he at once wrote a friend denouncing the conserva¬ 
tives, and referred bitterly to Dickinson as “a certain great fortune 
and piddling genius.” This letter fell into the hands of the English, 
who published it; so that when Dickinson read it, he cut Adams in 
the street. The downright Braintree lawyer informs us that during 
some of his public harangues in Philadelphia at this time, “on look¬ 
ing round the assembly I have seen horror, terror, and detestation 
strongly marked on the countenances” of many of his auditors. 53 

When a new Assembly met in October, it found the spirit of 
factionalism growing more pronounced in the Province. It was 
hardly as able an Assembly as before, though Franklin and Robert 
Morris as well as Dickinson, Mifflin, and Ross were present. A new 
Committee of Safety was appointed. 54 The Quakers brought for¬ 
ward a careful explanation of their objections to any share in the 
war, which angered the city committee of observation and the troops 
now drilling everywhere. Indignant public protests came from these 
patriots, and the pressure upon the Assembly grew stronger than 
ever from the radical side. The result was that late in November, 
after prolonged debate, a special tax was levied upon those who for 
conscience’s sake refused to bear arms, while new war measures 
were voted. After the session ended, the storm rose constantly 
higher. The conservatives and extremists were becoming irreconcil¬ 
able. Most alarming of all to Dickinson, Morris, and Thomson, the 
question whether the Charter and Assembly should be suppressed 
was becoming the central issue. 55 

The struggle of the right and left wings of the Whigs in Pennsyl¬ 
vania was largely a reflection of the same increasing struggle in Con¬ 
gress and a half-dozen other Colonies. As 1776 began, those who 
believed in independence and those who did not openly clashed. 
Thomas Paine published his powerful argument for it, “Common 
Sense,” from a Philadelphia press on January 9, 1776. Some had 

83 Adams’s “Works,” II, 407-13; Cf. Austin’s “Life of Gerry,” I, 194. 

B * Votes and Proceedings, VI, 626; it had 32 members. 

68 Stille’s “Life of Dickinson,” I, 172-75; the radicals, as in New York, were some¬ 
times called “the Presbyterian party.” 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 103 


previously held that separation from Britain was inevitable, while 
many were convinced by his pamphlet. Congress tended to be more 
conservative than General American opinion, but in Congress the 
same sentiment began to find vigorous expression, the New England 
Colonies and Virginia being now for a total breach. Of the Penn¬ 
sylvania delegates, Franklin alone was at first boldly for inde¬ 
pendence, and his stand made him the object of no little abuse. A 
Marylander wrote from Philadelphia on February 4 that “Franklin 
has hurt himself much here, and reigns only with the Presbyterian 
interest, which is much stronger than I could wish it to be.” It 
was realized that so far as independence went, Pennsylvania prob¬ 
ably held the scales; that when Franklin and the Adamses won her 
over, the step would be taken. But the Pennsylvania delegates were 
bound by instructions, drawn up the previous November by Dickin¬ 
son, which enjoined them to reject all proposals leading to a separa¬ 
tion from England. 58 

The press of the Province warmly took sides upon this contest in 
Congress. The chief leaders of the conservatives remained Dickin¬ 
son, Mifflin, Morris, and an exceedingly able young Scotch-born 
lawyer of Carlisle named James Wilson; those of the radical party 
were Dr. Franklin, Thomas McKean, and such frontier chieftains as 
Robert Whitehill. But among the radicals at Philadelphia new men 
were coming to the front, some of them military officers, like the 
fire-eating Colonel Daniel Roberdeau of the city battalions, and some 
civilians like Judge George Bryan. The newcomers were for the 
most part men of the same ultra-democratic principles as Samuel 
Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They disliked British rule, and also 
disliked the somewhat aristocratic character of the Province Charter, 
which gave the western population an inadequate representation in 
the Assembly, and denied the ballot to unpropertied freemen. 
Paine’s remarks upon State government were written to please such 
leaders. John Adams, as probably the most determined leader of 
the movement in Congress for independence, was glad to ally himself 
with them to overthrow the Assembly, and thus bring Pennsylvania 
into line. 57 Naturally, his exertions were resented by all conserva¬ 
tives as an impudent meddling in Province affairs. 

The angry excitement, the uncertainty of the outcome, and the 


66 Reed’s “Reed,” I, 155; Cf. Austin’s “Life of Gerry, I, 179. 

87 Adams did not like their governmental ideas, however, nor theyjus. When he 
published his “Thoughts on Government” 
came to Adams’s lodgings to remonstrate. 


1776, they were alarmed, and Paine 


104 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


dependence of the government upon it, made Pennsylvanians feel 
during the late winter that a kind of anarchy had fallen upon the 
Colony. But the march of events favored the radicals. Sporadic 
fighting from New Hampshire to Georgia, rumors of a British attack 
on New York, and above all, the evidence that the British Ministry 
would be unyielding, strengthened the sentiment for more extreme 
measures. It encouraged the democratic element and the frontier 
counties to demand immediate reforms in the structure of the 
government. 

In the midst of the turmoil, the Assembly sat from the middle of 
February until April 6, 1776, and resumed its labors May 20. 58 It 
was bewildered. Animated by a keen sense of duty to the conserva¬ 
tives they represented, still strongly attached to the past, not com¬ 
prehending the drift of the times, its members found it painful to 
make concessions to the radical clamor. The city extremists in dis¬ 
gust called a new conference of the county committees, intending to 
create a powerful Provincial Congress, a move which greatly alarmed 
all the moderates. 59 But Dickinson, laboring frenziedly, succeeded 
in postponing the crisis. The insistent western demand for a fairer 
Assembly representation was met in March, when by a heavy ma¬ 
jority, 21 to 9, the legislature provided for admitting seventeen addi¬ 
tional members—four from the city and the remainder from eight 
counties—almost balancing the two sections. 60 The city committee¬ 
men, thus mollified, revoked the call for a new Provincial 
conference. 61 

But two other insistent demands of the radicals and democrats 
remained unsatisfied. The more important was for the abolition of 
the property qualifications for the ballot. Do not farmers and 
mechanics constitute ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the American 
people? asked one writer. Do not half the brains and character of 

B8 Votes and Proceedings, VI, 726. 

69 Voting in the Convention would be by counties, and hence the radicals would 
control it. Paine in “Common Sense” had attacked the Assembly as unrepresentative, 
and not a real spokesman for the Colony. But Reed “applied himself earnestly to 
obviate the necessity or pretext for precipitate action by procuring the redress of the 
two great grievances of which the popular party complained—the non-revision of the 
articles of the Association, and the inadequacy of representation in the Assembly.” 
Reed, “Reed,” I, 162. Reed was in the legislature at the time. The city committee 
of inspection had been authorized by the previous provincial conference to call another 
conference at any time it chose. See the Pa. Packet, March 18 ff., for a wordy war 
between “Cato” and others. “Cato,” accusing the committee of wishing to destroy the 
Charter Constitution, said that not more than 200 electors had participated in its 
choice. 

60 Two each from Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton, and one 
each from Bedford, Northumberland, and Westmoreland Counties. 

61 “Cato” declared that public sentiment had forced this step. “I know of some 
counties where the whole committee was named by six or seven voices only.” 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 105 


Philadelphia belong to men with leather aprons and the rest to sons 
of such men? 62 If the poor are not to vote, America had better 
acknowledge the jurisdiction of the gentlemen who make up Parlia¬ 
ment. Again, in the press and on the street corners, a noisy clamor 
was raised against the oath of allegiance to the King which all 
Assemblymen, as for seventy years previous, had taken. This oath 
had no real importance, yet it was called an inconsistency and 
an obstacle to patriotic action. Finally, many radicals were deeply 
offended when on April 4 the Assembly, following Dickinson’s lead, 
refused to rescind the instructions to the delegates in Congress, 
keeping them bound to oppose independence. 63 

As May opened, it was plain that the slow-moving Assembly and 
the Charter were in dire peril. On the first of the month, elections 
were held for the seventeen additional members. In Philadelphia 
there was a little disorder by the Germans, upon whose right to vote 
unless naturalized some doubts had been expressed. The Quakers, 
Anglicans, and Proprietary party united there to beat the radicals, 
and won three of the four seats, the fourth being taken by George 
Clymer, a sober, responsible member of the progressive faction. 
This victory in the metropolis assured the conservatives of a con¬ 
tinued control of the House. 64 But in the western and northern 
counties the radicals made such a sweep that all the moral advantage 
of the election was theirs—only one of the thirteen men chosen seems 
to have been a distinct conservative. They were jubilant, declaring 
that the Province was with them, and that they would have won 
even in Philadelphia had so many of their party not been in the 
army. Radical leaders like Roberdeau and Whitehill saw that an 
alliance between the mechanics in Philadelphia and the Irish, Scotch, 
and other frontiersmen would give them control of the Colony; 
a sweeping control if they could broaden the ballot. In the neigh¬ 
boring Provinces they beheld the Provincial Congresses ruling 
unfettered. They therefore determined to obtain authority from 
the Continental Congress to change the framework of government, 
and to sweep the Assembly forever into the waste-basket. 


82 Pa. Packet, March 18, 1776. 

83 C. H. Lincoln, “Rev. Movement in Pa., 1760-1776. .. „ _ 

88 The contest was remarkably close in Philadelphia, the head of the P 9 11 ”f 

41 votes, and Daniel Roberdeau, at the foot, 890. See the Remembrancer of 
‘hristopher Marshall, 67, 68; a volume that contains much material upon Cannon 
oung Matlack, and Paine. Paine thought that the defeat of the radicals in the 
:, y . was due to the absence of many WHg voters ^.thAe^nn.forces, ^nd was 


iy WdS UUC v*. -- 

oubtless right. See Phila. Journal, 
a.”; Reed’s “Reed,” I, 184. 



io6 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


It was therefore Congress, the Virginians and New Englanders 
leading, which brought Pennsylvania’s affairs to a crisis. On May io 
it passed John Adams’s resolution urging the Colonies which had no 
adequate governments to form them, and five days later it declared 
against oaths of allegiance to the Crown. The radicals quickly 
responded. On May 20, the day the Assembly reconvened, they 
held a mass-meeting in Philadelphia with Roberdeau as chairman. 
It drew up a manifesto, which recited that as Congress had asked 
for new governments under the authority of the people, and as the 
Assembly derived its powers from the Crown, it should not be 
allowed to frame the new government; moreover, its members were 
chosen by too narrow an electorate, and some of them were too 
closely connected with the Proprietary. The mass-meeting did not 
deny the right of the Assembly to sit for a short time merely as a 
legislature. 65 But it assumed that the Charter, as an antiquated 
relic of British authority, would have to be replaced by a Constitu¬ 
tion, and it wished the conference of county committees to summon a 
constitutional convention. Trusty agents were sent to Lancaster 
and other towns to arouse sentiment for this plan. 66 

The friends of the old order, Dickinson and Thomson at their 
head, rushed to the defense. Could intelligent men at one stroke 
surrender the venerated and time-tested Charter? It was rooted in 
the popular affection. With its provision for an annual Assembly, 
the election of which was fixed upon a certain day, and its refusal 
to allow the Governor to dissolve or prorogue the legislature, it 
fully safeguarded the public liberties. A great mass-meeting of the 
conservatives drew up a counter-manifesto, praising the Assembly, 
and prophesying that the radicals’ plan would damp the zeal of 
multitudes for the American cause. Even Joseph Reed, an able 
popular leader on the progressive side, joined in the protest. 67 

The Assembly tried to ride out the tempest, making one new con¬ 
cession after another. It took steps to repeal the naturalization 
requirements and the oath of allegiance to the King. On June 5 a 

86 Many radical leaders, however, did deny this, and wished a convention to pass 
upon the status of the Assembly. Reed’s “Reed,” I, 185 ff. 

69 Cf. Pa. Packet, May 20, 1776, letter by “Forester”; the text of the manifesto is 
in Votes and Proceedings, VI, 726-27. It states that “we have very alarming appre¬ 
hensions, that a new government modeled by persons so inconsistently circumstanced, 
would be the means of subjecting ourselves and our posterity, to greater grievances 
than any we have hitherto experienced.” 

67 The text of the counter-petition is in Votes and Proceedings, VI, 732 ff.; see also 
Harley, “Life of Charles Thomson,” 78, 79. A remonstrance in favor of the Charter 
was signed by 6,000 citizens of the city and adjacent counties; Pa. Gazette June 12 
1776. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 107 

committee headed by Dickinson was asked to draft instructions 
giving the delegates in Congress carte blanche to vote for independ¬ 
ence, and they were approved on the fourteenth. 68 But the radicals 
would now be satisfied with nothing less than the surrender of the 
Charter. They alleged that some of the Assemblymen had shown 
themselves absolute Tories by their stubborn opposition to inde¬ 
pendence, that the majority had treated Congress with impertinence, 
and that they had tried to heighten a local quarrel between different 
revolutionary agencies. A wave of patriotic feeling was sweeping 
the continent. Nearly all provinces had now been won to inde¬ 
pendence, and Dickinson and Robert Morris, still averse to it, were 
by many regarded as virtual traitors. Some radical Assemblymen, 
new and old, began to stay away from the legislature, so that it 
became harder and harder to find a quorum. The local military 
forces denied the right of the Assembly to appoint the two briga¬ 
dier-generals for which Congress had called. Finally, on June 14 
the Assembly adjourned; it intended to meet again in August, but 
was never able to organize. 69 The old order was dead. 

The sequel needs hardly to be described. Already the Philadelphia 
committee, under McKean, had summoned a conference of the 
county committees, which, four days after the adjournment of the 
regular Assembly, came to order in Carpenters’ Hall. 70 It stopped 
short whatever was left of the old Provincial administration, notifying 
the judges, for example, to suspend the courts until a new govern¬ 
ment could be devised. Rules were laid down for electing delegates 
to a constitutional convention, to gather on June 15, and the over¬ 
turn in Pennsylvania was complete. 

But the manner in which the overturn had come chagrined a large 
part of the population of Pennsylvania. The triumph of McKean, 
Bryan, Franklin, and Roberdeau was the defeat not only of Dickin¬ 
son, Wilson, Morris, Thomson, and Mifflin, but of the great majority 
of the Quakers and Anglicans. Many looked upon the Assembly 
with an esteem that dated from the years in which, under Speakers 
Lloyd and Kinsey, it had resisted Proprietorial tyrannies; many 
regarded Penn’s Charter with deep reverence. The destruction of 
both seemed wanton. Had not the Assembly, step by step, met 

68 Votes and Proceedings, VI, 740. 

69 Idem, 743. __ _ , , 

70 The call for the conference is in the Pa. Packet, June 17, 1776; see also an 
“Address to the People" in that paper, June 24; and the report of the conference in 
the issue for July 1. 


io8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


every demand made upon it? Was not the Charter one of the best 
in America? Both, a multitude of patriotic Pennsylvanians felt, 
should have been preserved. 71 

III. The Decision for Independence 

Thus ended the last phase of the revolutionary transition in the 
Colony where the conservatives showed the most tenacious resistance 
to the radicals; what of this phase elsewhere? Up to the spring of 
1776 the Provinces had been a straggling file. Massachusetts and 
Virginia had kept to the front, with the other New England 
Colonies and North Carolina close at their heels and sometimes even 
for a few paces ahead. Far to the rear at first had limped Georgia, 
taunted and scolded by her sisters, but by a sudden spurt in the 
summer of 1775 she had taken her place well forward. New York 
was still, from the radical point of view, one of the laggards, and 
South Carolina another. Just how were all brought up to the mark 
of independence in July, 1776? 

The war had become general by the close of 1775. The British 
were pent in Boston by an army, now under Washington, which had 
cheered enthusiastically one summer day when 1400 riflemen, 
tall, keen-eyed men in hunting shirts, had marched in from the 
inland districts of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Falmouth, 
now Portland, Maine, had been reduced to smoking embers by a 
bombardment in October. Montreal had fallen to the Americans 
in November, and Quebec had repulsed them the following month. 
In Virginia Patrick Henry, who cherished military ambitions, had 
been appointed commander-in-chief, and during the late summer and 
autumn of 1775 troops had filed into Williamsburg and bivouacked 
behind William and Mary College. Fighting began there the middle 
of November, when virtually forced upon the Virginians by Dun- 
more’s provocative raids from Norfolk. The Virginia Committee of 

71 Charles Thomson wrote that Pennsylvania had a liberal Charter-Constitution, 
admirably adapted for independence. It should have been kept. “The Assembly of 
Pennsylvania, if they could be brought to take a part, supplied the place of a Conven¬ 
tion, with this advantage, that being a part of the Legislature, they preserved the 
legal forms of government, consequently had more weight and authority among the 
people. . . . The cause of America was every day gaining ground, and the people 
growing more and more determined. The timid were acquiring courage, and the 
wavering confirmed in the opposition. Hence, it was apparent the election would soon 
be wholly in the power of the patriot and Whig party. For these reasons, the Whigs 
who were then members wished to temporize, and make use of the Assembly rather 
than a Convention, but unhappily they were thwarted. . .” Thomson Papers, N. Y. 
HisL Soc. Colls., 1878, 282-83; Pa. Mag. of Hist., XIII, No. 4, where Charles J. 
Stille attacks the work of the radicals as a misfortune to Pennsylvania. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT log 


Safety, headed by Edmund Pendleton, a conservative barrister more 
than fifty years of age and of infirm health, had prevented an 
attack upon the governor when he could easily have been crushed. 
Now, a brilliant little victory won at the Great Bridge near Norfolk 
by Colonel William Woodford, whom Pendleton had pushed to the 
front while holding Henry back, showed that the Americans were 
masters of the situation. 72 There was fighting in Georgia at the 
beginning of March, 1776, when a British demonstration against 
Savannah was repelled. During the winter the Tories of the back 
country in the Carolinas showed increasing restiveness, and those of 
North Carolina were bloodily defeated at Moore’s Creek in February. 

The more radical colonists, by the end of 1775 inclining strongly 
towards independence, were eager to give their governments a still 
greater regularity and permanence of form. The influence of New 
England lent a powerful impulse in this direction. Massachusetts 
in the summer of 1775, and New Hampshire at the close of the year, 
had taken their places beside Connecticut and Rhode Island with 
wholly popular governments sufficiently good to last for a long 
time. Virginia and South Carolina followed their example by asking 
the Continental Congress for advice on the subject, and were coun¬ 
selled to call a full and free representation of the people whenever 
they liked, to draw up a framework that would best secure peace 
and good order during the continuance of the dispute with Great 


Britain. 

Both early in 1776 were almost ready to take that step. Georgia’s 
Provincial Congress did come near taking it in April. Sitting at 
Savannah, the members enacted a set of “Rules and Regulations” 
which provided a crude government as a temporary expedient. A 
President and commander-in-chief was to be elected by the Congress 
for six months; he was to be assisted by a Council of Safety; 
and subject to the advice of the Council, he was to have all the 
executive powers of government. Courts were erected, and the 
office of Attorney-General was created. The Provincial Congress 
of course retained all the legislative powers, and had supreme control 


of the Colony. 73 

72 Henry warmly cherished his military aspirations, and his chagrin when he was 

denied a brigadiership by the Continental Congress was as deep as Hancock’s chagrin 
when John Adams nominated Washington to head the Continental army. Washington 
expressed a widespread view when he wrote that “I think my countrymen made a 
capital mistake when they took Henry out of the senate to place him in the field ; 
“Writings,” III, 463. For the spirit in which Henry resigned his colonelcy, see 4 
Amer Archives, IV, 1516 ff. . . , ((r , . „ TT a 

73 Text of the “Rules and Regulations” is in Stevens s Georgia, II, 292 ff. 


no 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


In South Carolina the final decision for independence followed a 
struggle almost as interesting as that in Pennsylvania. The patriots 
there had shown a fighting spirit during 1775, but they did not want 
a total severance from England. John Drayton, a close observer, 
says that even after Bunker Hill the Council of Safety was almost 
evenly divided between the radicals and conservatives, with its 
head, Laurens, apparently siding with neither. When the radicals 
wished the harbor fortified, Laurens defeated their first proposal, and 
in September, 1775, he opposed a scheme for blocking up its entrance 
by sinking vessels. Holding this balance, and representing a great 
body of educated middle opinion, he wrote his brother in October 
that though he would stake everything upon resistance to British 
tyranny, he had always believed that the “taking the reins of 
government into our hands” was an “injurious determination.” The 
introduction of the subject of independence into the Congress of 
February, 1776, caused such an outburst of indignation that if the 
radicals had pressed it, the Congress would have dissolved then 
and there. Laurens that month compared himself to a child violently 
thrust from his father’s house, and declared that the word inde¬ 
pendence “cuts me deep—has caused tears to trickle down my 
cheeks.” 74 John Rutledge, the foremost citizen, also wept; he was 
emphatically against separation from the Empire to the last, and 
there is reason to believe that as late as 1778 he cherished a faint 
hope of friendly reunion. Many lowlanders felt precisely as he did. 

Nor was loyalism confined to Charleston and the educated, aristo¬ 
cratic lowland planters. Up-country were elements which July 4, 
1776, found indefeasibly attached to the Crown—some of the Scovil- 
ite Regulators, the Scotch who had seen enough of rebellion in ’45, a 
few Ulster Scotch who disliked the lowlanders, and Germans who 
still thought of George as Elector of Hanover. In September, 1775, 
a bloody battle at Ninety-Six between thousands of Whigs and Tories 
was barely averted, and in November a conflict there between 2000 
Tories and 600 Whigs resulted in thirty-four fatalities. 75 It was 
necessary for the Provincial Congress at the close of 1775 to send a 
force northwestward to traverse the Province from end to end and 
overcome the Tories. 

When 1776 opened there was still a powerful weight of sentiment 
against even a temporary new Constitution, as opening the door to 

74 Wallace, “Life of Henry Laurens,” 224, 225. 

7B Drayton, “Memoirs of the American Rev.,” II, 72, 73; 118-122. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT hi 


independence, yet a committee was appointed on February n to 
report the draft of one. 76 While this committee was at work, almost 
all opposition was swept away in a night by the news of the enact¬ 
ment of Parliament on December 21, authorizing the confiscation 
of certain American property as that of rebels. On March 5 the 
new plan of government was received, and three weeks later was 
adopted. It was hardly a Constitution in the modern sense, for 
those who, like Rutledge and Lowndes, clung to the belief that they 
might soon return amicably under the unquestioned sovereignty of 
the Crown would hear of nothing but a framework of provisional 
government. That belief floated away with the smoke of the battle 
of Fort Moultrie three months later, and most citizens received 
with outward jubilance the news of independence. 

None of the other Colonies south of the Potomac stood in any 
doubt as the spring of 1776 advanced. Georgia was stung to anger 
by the attack on Savannah. Similarly, North Carolina was thor¬ 
oughly aroused by the Tory peril that was stemmed at Moore’s 
Creek, and by the presence of a hostile force under Sir Henry Clinton 
on the Cape Fear River. Her Provincial Convention was the first 
body of the kind to give explicit approval to the proposal of inde¬ 
pendence (April 13, 1776), and the same day it appointed a com¬ 
mittee to prepare a tentative draft of a constitution. In Virginia 
the first shots that Dunmore’s and Woodford’s troops exchanged 
near Norfolk were virtually a volley across the grave of the old 
crown regime, and most patriots recognized that it was dead. The 
Convention called upon all citizens to rise in resistance to Dunmore, 
threatened with death all loyalists who fought against their fellow 
Virginians, and supported Woodford as he pushed rapidly forward 
and captured Norfolk. When a little later the town was destroyed 
by fire following a British bombardment, and when Virginians heard 
that Dunmore had proclaimed freedom to the slaves of all rebels, 
almost the last vestiges of the desire for a compromise disappeared. 
Most of the counties were eager for full political freedom. The final 
and most important Provincial Convention, met on May 5, 1776, at 
Williamsburg, with the fixed purpose of declaring for American 
independence, and forming a new government. Its first days were 


78 A committee on February 10 had reported “that the present mode of conducting 
affairs is inadequate to the well governing of the good people of the Colony and that 
the Congress should immediately undertake a new government. Drayton, Memoirs 
of the American Rev.,” II, 171-73* 


112 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

devoted to a variety of war measures, but on the 15th it instructed 
the Virginia delegates at Philadelphia to propose independence, and 
appointed a committee to prepare a constitution. 

New York hesitated a little longer than the radicals allowed even 
Pennsylvania to do. When Washington, with his army following 
him over the muddy roads from Boston, reached the city early in 
April, he found that, as he put it, he would have a difficult card to 
play. The Tories were numerous, in constant communication with 
the British ships in the harbor, and so bold that they had recently 
proposed sending out writs for a new Assembly. But the chief 
difficulty was presented, as in South Carolina and Pennsylvania, by 
the conservative Whigs, who were ready to fight but as yet not ready 
to cut all the old ties with the motherland. 

After the harsh measures taken against the Tories during the fall 
and early winter, a certain reaction had occurred among the Whigs. 
Men like Jay were disgusted by such episodes as the destruction of 
the press of the Tory editor Rivington. The elections to the Pro¬ 
vincial Congress in May, 1776, the same month that the radicals 
were beaten in the Assembly elections in Pennsylvania, showed that 
the moderates were still in control, and that they resented the 
excessive fervor of leaders like Lamb and McDougall. There was 
no doubt that most of the inhabitants were opposed to any summary 
change in the political position of the Province. When in June the 
question of independence was presented at Philadelphia by R. H. 
Lee, and the New York delegates wrote home for instructions, the 
Provincial Congress passed a resolution, moved by Jay, which de¬ 
clared that the people had not yet authorized a declaration of inde¬ 
pendence. 77 However, late in May it had been determined that a 
new government should be framed, and the voters had been asked to 
send delegates to a new Congress, to be also a constitutional con¬ 
vention—a virtual notice that independence was at hand. This new 
Congress ratified the national declaration on July 9, a week late. 

Each of the three smaller Colonies touching Pennsylvania waited, 
like her, until June before giving their decision. New Jersey was 
the most progressive in temper. President John Witherspoon of the 
college at Princeton, who had come from Scotland less than a decade 
before, had been asked whether he thought the colonists ripe for 
independence. “Ripe? Rotting!” he rejoined. All his undergradu- 


77 4 Amer. Archives, VI, 1212; Journals N. Y. Prov. Cong., II, 236 ff. 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 113 


ates were Sons of Liberty, he had told John Adams the fall of I 774 - 78 
Here it was the third Provincial Convention, meeting at Burlington, 
the nearest suitable town to Philadelphia, on June n, 1776, which 
finished converting the Colony into a State. It at once sent to 
Philadelphia the five staunch believers in independence whose names 
appear under the Declaration, ordered Governor Franklin’s arrest, 
and began the drafting of a State Constitution. 

In Delaware the result was long in doubt, for the Tories were 
almost as powerful as in New York. As the discussion in Congress 
grew warm, with Caesar Rodney and George Read at first holding 
the Colony against independence, while McKean labored for it with 
indomitable zeal, party feeling was intensified. Many Quakers and 
Episcopalians felt as averse to it as their brethren higher up the 
Delaware, but the defeat which the conservatives suffered in Penn¬ 
sylvania decisively weakened them. Their overthrow was followed, 
as in the larger Colony, by the overthrow of the Charter, and in 
August a Constitution was drafted. 79 As for Maryland, as late as 
May 21 the Provincial Convention was still “firmly persuaded that a 
reunion with Great Britain on constitutional principles would most 
effectually secure the rights and liberties” of the people. The chief 
factor in altering that conviction, apart from the pressure of events, 
was a whirlwind campaign waged by Samuel Chase. On June 28 
the delegates in Congress were finally ordered to join in approving 
the Declaration. 80 


IV. Function of Revolutionary Governments 

Roughly speaking, it had taken one year, from the spring of 1773 
to the spring of 1774, to arrange a system of steady communication 
among the various Colonies. It had taken another year, from the 
spring of 1774 to the spring of 1775, to give the Colonies revolu¬ 
tionary congresses, conventions, or conferences, prepared to exercise 
some of the powers of government. It had taken a half year, to the 
fall of 1775, to drive out several governors, take over more powers, 
and prepare to fight; and another half year to determine upon inde¬ 
pendence. The revolutionary movement was an accelerating stream. 


78 c. H. Hunt, “Life of Edward Livingston,” 38, 39 - In the month of independence 
Witherspoon was one of three Americans selected for effigy-burning by the British and 

T » i J?T n Icha'rf, 1 “Delaware,” I, .86-87, 2if, .W, T. Read “Life and Corr. of 
George Read,” ch. i and 2; Agnes Hunt, “Provincial Committees of Safety, 98, 
L P Powell “Historic Towns of the Middle States ” chapter on Wilmington, 
so 4 Amer. Archives, VI, 1491; Proceedings of Md. Convention, 176. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


114 

The next six months was to see a marked burst of activity in the 
drafting of State Constitutions. 

Regarding the Revolution from the provincial point of view, we 
are impressed by the logical sureness with which it passed from 
stage to stage, the regularity of the steps taken. First we see the 
scattering local committees; then a legislative committee of corre¬ 
spondence; then a congress starting up side by side with the legis¬ 
lature; then the disappearance of the latter and the rough elabora¬ 
tion of the new government to cover executive and judicial functions; 
and finally the drafting of a new and free constitution. One reason 
for this regularity and logic was the fact that in many Provinces 
the conservatives fought every inch of the way, and gains had to be 
made rather by converting than by coercing them. A greater reason 
lay in the ingrained political sagacity of the Americans, inimical to 
unnecessary violence and hurry. Violence there was, and even some 
local mob-government and brief reigns of terror; but taking the 
Colonies as a whole the revolution was effected, in so far as a revo¬ 
lution can be, with remarkable moderation. 

The significance, in this revolution, of the emergence of serviceable 
popular governments before the end of 1775 can hardly be exag¬ 
gerated. It meant that the people had committed themselves to 
political liberty while they were still largely protesting their loyalty 
to the old order. It meant that, as John Adams said, they would 
never bear to go back to governments dependent on the crown and 
otherwise so defective as the former governments had been. Great 
was the satisfaction taken in the new legislatures by many of those 
who had participated fully in the old—the merchants of Boston, the 
planters of Virginia. But far keener was the satisfaction taken by 
men who had been excluded under the previous regime. 

The majority of the colonists who thus felt a direct incentive to 
push the revolutionary movement through till all its fruits had been 
gathered comprised two main groups. One was the alert, irrepres¬ 
sible proletarian element of the seaports from Boston to Charleston, 
who had been largely debarred from the ballot by a property quali¬ 
fication for voting. The other was the settlers of the back country, 
a great homogenous population, rapidly increasing, but deprived of 
due political rights by unjust discrimination in the matter of repre¬ 
sentation. They had grievances also in the unfair administration of 
taxes and of justice. From the valley of the Susquehanna to that 


THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 115 

of the Savannah these inland settlers, in whose breasts a powerful 
individualism was nurtured by frontier conditions, were alike in 
two salient respects. Nearly all dissenters, having little formal 
education, and being of many European strains, they felt little 
attachment to England; while economic and other reasons made 
them eager for a due share in the government. They welcomed the 
opportunity the revolutionary movement gave them. In Pennsyl¬ 
vania they turned the scale for independence, and in South Carolina 
greatly assisted in doing so. But independence for them meant 
only the first milestone on a long road. 

Just how great should be the representation of these elements, the 
city workers and tradesmen and the small farmers, in the new State 
governments? Should democracy as these radical classes defined it 
come into being? Their kind of democracy allowed no place (outside 
New England) for a state-subsidized church; it was hostile to 
primogeniture and entail; it objected to taxation based on land- 
acreage irrespective of value, or upon a poll tax irrespective of 
how much the poll owned; it wanted justice to be convenient, and 
thought that the seat of government should be central, not on the 
coast. In short, was special privilege, as well as British privilege, 
to be extirpated? The paradoxical fact stands out that if the old 
British governments had been more abusive, the new governments 
might have been more liberal than they immediately became. The 
work of destruction would have been more ardent and complete, and 
reconstruction would have commenced nearer the foundations. As 
it was, in a State like Connecticut most good citizens would have 
stared had such a radical as Jefferson told them that any reforms 
were needed. But the new order and the old order were meeting 
on a far broader front than that comprehended in a conflict between 
American Whigs and British and American Tories. That had become 
impressively evident as the States took up the task of constitution¬ 
making. 

Three main facts, then, are impressed upon us by a study of the 
transition from Colony to State in the thirteen individual members 
of the American family. We realize that when Americans thought 
of independence in 1775~7^> they usually thought of it in terms 
of their own commonwealth, of Massachusetts, New Jersey, or 
Georgia, rather than in terms of the nation. The future form and 
character of the nation, even if one survived, were hazy and inchoate. 


n6 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


But it was a splendid certainty that the Provinces had slipped their 
shackles, and were stretching their unfettered limbs in a new political 
freedom. In the second place, we realize with new force the intensity 
of the clash between radical and conservative groups. In our 
national history the resistance made to independence by the Quakers, 
Anglicans, and other propertied folk of southeastern Pennsylvania, 
or the planters and merchants of South Carolina, bulks small. It 
is only when we give close scrutiny to the separate history of Penn¬ 
sylvania and South Carolina that we envisage its true importance, 
and its complex economic and political causes. Finally, it becomes 
clear to us that the years of transition, 1774-76, were not so much 
years of destruction as construction. While the old Provincial 
governments were being slowly overturned, in their stead new and 
independent governmental structures were steadily rising. They 
were awkward, but vigorous. We are now to examine the final and 
most important phase of this process of government-building—the 
writing of formal Constitutions. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 

Even if we make allowance for the fact that the main elements 
of the new governments were simply adapted from the old colonial 
forms, the labor of writing the State constitutions in 1776-77 was 
one of forbidding magnitude. In the State that was the very key¬ 
stone of the Union, Pennsylvania, the party animosities aroused 
during this task brought on a convulsion which threatened civil war. 
In another rich and powerful State, New York, the perplexities of 
constitutional theorizing gave birth to several institutional mon¬ 
strosities that it required two generations of bitter experience to 
wipe out. In still other States, such as North Carolina, the glaring 
imperfections of the new government half disabled it during the 
Revolutionary struggle. But the task was approached with ardor, 
for the radical patriots saw in it the chief opportunity and reward 
of the early phase of the revolutionary conflict. 

It was the first time in the world’s history that a large group of 
communities had begun the formation of their own governments 
under written constitutions. It gave such instruments, indeed, an 
importance they had never before possessed. We are taught to look 
upon the written political compact, embodying the two ideas of 
representative government and full equality before the law, as Anglo- 
American in origin, the Mayflower Compact being its first true 
exemplification. Certainly no other people had ever regarded their 
written constitutions with quite the proud jealousy with which the 
eighteenth century Americans regarded their charters. According 
to John Locke, political rights existed independently of the mere 
scratches of ink and pen on paper, but in practice, the charters 
had been the bulwarks of the people against oppression, the stepping 
stones to a larger freedom. The settlers did not look upon them 
as revocable grants, but as agreements inviolable except by mutual 
consent. It was precisely because the three leading New England 
Colonies had been founded upon the charter principle and had 

117 


n8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


retained their charters that New England was more secure in her 
freedom than other sections. Having asserted their independence, 
the colonists’ first thought was to guarantee it by documents having 
the nature of fundamental law. 

Many students will accept Lincoln’s statement that “The Union 
is older than the States, and in fact created them as States;” 1 for 
no permanent changes looking towards the substitution of State 
for colonial forms took place until the Continental Congress had 
suggested a procedure. Patrick Henry declared in the first Congress 
that with independence at hand, the colonies were at an end, and 
the nation alone existed. “Government is dissolved. . . . Where 
are your landmarks, your boundaries of Colonies? . . . The dis¬ 
tinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and 
New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian; I am an 
American. ... I go upon the supposition that government is at an 
end. All distinctions are thrown down; all America is one mass.” 2 
When the fighting near Boston in the spring of 1775 made it clear 
that the separation from the mother country would be long-con¬ 
tinued if not final, the colonists turned to the Continental Congress 
for advice upon more permanent governments. Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire, Virginia, and North Carolina in rapid succession 
requested instructions. And the Provinces did not become States 
till Congress declared the national independence in 1776. 

I. How the Constitutions Were Written 

When Herbert Spencer visited the United States in 1881-2, he 
expressed the opinion that our governmental system was not working 
well, declaring that this proved the truth of his conviction that no 
Constitution could be an artificial creation, like ours, and succeed; 
it must be an organic growth. Lord Bryce exposed the error in this 
view when he explained to British readers how the State Constitu¬ 
tions grew out of the colonial governments, and how the national 
Constitution in turn was largely founded upon the State Constitu¬ 
tions. 3 Two States, Connecticut and Rhode Island, kept their 
charters not for a brief period, but well into the nineteenth century. 

1 Special message to Congress, July 4, 1861. 

2 Adams’s “Works,” II, 365 ff.; N. Y. Hist. Soc., Duane Papers, IV, 189 

3 Bryce, The American Commonwealth,” 19 ff. (1888 ed.); E. L. Youmans, “Herbert 
Spencer on the Americans. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS ng 


The Pennsylvanians, having for decades maintained a unicameral 
legislature, in the face of efforts by certain interests to make the 
Governor’s Council a true upper house, now resisted for fifteen 
stormy years the movement for a bicameral legislature. 

Everywhere the main outlines of the State governments followed 
those of the colonial governments. An elective Governor succeeded 
the appointive Governor, though he invariably lost some of the old 
powers; the legislatures functioned precisely as in the later days of 
the colonial regime; and the judiciary suffered few changes save in 
mode of appointment for many years. The State governments of 
1776-77, in short, were the fruit of a growth which had begun when, 
under the King’s charter, the Governor, Council, and Burgesses of 
Virginia met in the little Jamestown church in 1619 to hold the 
first representative legislature on American soil. This growth 
differed almost as profoundly from the British system of government 
as the latter differed from the despotism of France, for the great 
principle of the separation of powers was an impassable gulf between 
them. Since Walpole had established ministerial government, the 
separation of powers had no actual existence in England, while the 
general hostility between Governor and legislature had confirmed 
it in America. The American growth was unique, distinctive. 

Not only upon the practice of a century and a half, but upon 
the political theorizing of the same period—the writings of Harring¬ 
ton, Milton, Hume, Locke, Blackstone, Montesquieu, and others— 
were the new American constitutions built. 


Hands that penned 

And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none 
The later Sidney, Marvell, Harrington, 

Young Vane and others, who called Milton friend. 

Locke, the great expositor of the principles of the Whig Revolu¬ 
tion of 1688, struck the very keynote of the American Revolution 
when he maintained that the supreme function of the state is to 
protect life, liberty, and property, which are the natural rights of 
all men; that political authority is held in trust for the public 
benefit alone; and that when the natural rights of mankind are 
violated by it, the people have the duty of altering or abolishing the 
government, and erecting a better in its place. “The true remedy 
of force without authority is to oppose force to it,” he declared, 
naming a series of governmental transgressions, such as the corrup- 


120 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

tion of parliament, the betrayal of a nation to its enemies, or the 
exercise of a personal tyranny in the stead of law, which dissolved 
the contract between sovereign and subject, and justified revolution. 4 
In his noble “Letter on Toleration” he stated the great principle of 
the distinction between the spheres occupied by church and state, 
and the propriety of their separation. He showed that religious 
persecution is wicked folly, and that in its healthy, normal condition 
the church is purely a voluntary organization. Locke was but one 
of the greatest liberal thinkers in a long line, owing much to prede¬ 
cessors like Richard Hooker and Algernon Sidney, while successors 
of such diverse views as Montesquieu, Burke, and Rousseau corrected 
and enlarged his doctrines; but he was the principal foundation stone 
on which the Revolutionary thinkers built. 

In the constitutional sphere, Locke’s and Montesquieu’s insistence 
upon the separation of powers into tight compartments corresponded 
with all the predilections of Americans. Unlike Harrington, Milton, 
and other republican writers, Locke wished to preserve the kingship, 
declaring only that Hobbes’s vicious theory of divine right should 
be discarded. But as a full believer in democracy, this rendered 
him only the more emphatic in asserting that the legislative authority 
must be maintained in careful separation from the executive, with 
the legislature normally supreme. If the executive could make laws, 
it would have the powers of a despot. If the legislators could 
execute laws, they might exempt themselves from obedience to 
them, and “thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest 
of the community.” Only in emergencies, as in time of war, might 
the two departments be merged—as several American States during 
the Revolution temporarily merged them. Montesquieu adopted 
this doctrine of the separation of powers, defining it as the very 
root of liberty. In “The Spirit of the Laws” (1748) he asserted 
that when the legislature and executive were united in the same 
person or body of magistrates, there could be no freedom, while 
the judicial power must similarly be held apart. In Turkey and 
the Italian republics, where all three branches were joined, the 
people groaned under a terrible oppression; in most European 
governments the ruler was invested with the first two powers alone, 

4 Locke, “The Two Treatises of Government,” Book II, ch. 18. Repeatedly Locke 
makes assertions that were used by the American patriot leaders almost without verbal 
change; e. g., in Book II, ch. n, “They must not raise taxes on the property of the 
people without the consent of the people given by themselves or their deputies.” 

6 Idem, Book II, ch. 12. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 121 


so that the government was more moderate; but the ideal form was 
one in which the three were rigidly separated. 6 

This doctrine has had a long, and in the opinion of some critics, 
an unfortunate history, since it was applied in the United States. 
Montesquieu’s careful analysis of the English government as an 
illustration of the dependence of political liberty upon checks and 
balances naturally appealed to Anglo-American readers. There were 
few New World students of politics who had not a thorough 
acquaintance with both Locke and Montesquieu. John Adams 
hailed Locke in 1760 as the discoverer of a new sphere, while in 1790 
Jefferson, advising his youthful friend Thomas Mann Randolph on 
a course of reading, wrote that “Locke’s little book on government 
is perfect as far as it goes.” 7 The writings of both men contain 
numerous detailed references to Montesquieu. The tendency of 
Americans to attribute maladministration to a want of separation 
between the departments of government is illustrated by a letter 
of R. H. Lee in May, 1776. The British government, he said, 
though admirable in design, lacked balance, for the prerogative of 
making peers and boroughs destroyed the independence of the 
legislature and opened the way to rank corruption. “However 
imperfect the English plan was, yet our late government in Virginia 
was infinitely worse. With us two thirds of the legislature, and all 
the executive and judiciary powers were in the same hands—in 
truth it was very near a tyranny, altho’ the mildness with which 
it was executed under Whig direction, made the evil little felt.” 8 

With independence in view, a wide debate upon the proper 
form of the new State governments at once began, and was carried 
on principally through pamphlets and newspaper essays. Since 
New England had enjoyed the most republican administration, men 
elsewhere looked to the New Englanders to lead this debate. Above 
them all towered the author of the “Novanglus” papers and the best 
part of the arguments used by the Massachusetts General Court 
against Governor Hutchinson—John Adams. 

In his early twenties Adams had formed the ambition of gaining 
distinction by his knowledge of the roots and theory of law and 


8 “The Spirit of the Laws,” Book XI, especially ch. 6. Cf. H. J. Laski, Political 
hought from Locke to Bentham,” 162 ff. Montesquieus system of course differed 
-eatlv from Locke’s. The former distinguished between executive,, legislative, and 
idicial powers; the latter between executive, legislative, and federative i.e., power 

'’ e AdS n “Wor r &,” I, 53 ! Jefferson’s “Writings,” Memorial Ed., VIII, 31. 

8 Lee, “Letters,” I, 190. 


122 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


government. He admonished himself at twenty-three to be diligent. 
“Study Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral writers; study 
Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, Vinnius, &c, and all other good civil 
writers.” The passage in his diary which describes how one week 
in October, 1758, he labored to translate Justinian, chiding himself 
because he wasted too much time with “chores, chat, tobacco, tea,” 
and putting all light volumes out of reach, is an amusing illustration 
of his application; 9 he formed the habit of careful legal analysis; 
and he blamed himself on the eve of the Revolution because he had 
spent an estate in books.. His chief worry when he rode away to 
the Continental Congress was that he did not have a wider “reading 
in law and history, that I might appear with less indecency before 
a variety of gentlemen whose education, travels, experiences, family, 
fortune, and everything will give them a vast superiority to me.” 10 
Burke once asked who had read Bolingbroke’s works through; yet 
Adams could truthfully say he had done so three times. By 1765 
he and the ill-fated Josiah Quincy stood foremost among all the 
Massachusetts lawyers on the popular side, and he was the best 
legal and constitutional adviser the revolutionary movement in that 
Province had. Now he entered a larger arena. 

To the discussions which John Adams and R. H. Lee held at 
Philadelphia in the fall of 1775 we owe the first important publica¬ 
tion upon the best form for a State government. Struck by the 
vigor and originality of Adams’s ideas, Lee suggested that he reduce 
them to paper. The two men thought alike, for since Congress had 
reassembled in 1775, both had been expounding the view that timid 
efforts at reconciliation would only encourage the British to greater 
exertions against America, and that the Colonies should act 
vigorously. Adams met Lee’s request by addressing to him on 
November 15, 1775, a short letter suggesting the main features 
for a Constitution, and Lee carried this letter to Virginia and showed 
it in manuscript to his friend. 

, r The scheme outlined was rough. Adams proposed the free choice 
of a House of Commons by the people; the choice of an upper 
legislative chamber by the House; and the election of the Governor 
and other executive officers annually by their joint ballot. The 
Governor’s powers were to be extensive, comprising a veto on 
legislation, command of the armed forces, and the appointment of 

9 Adams’s “Works,” II, 36, 37. 

10 Cf. “Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife,” 31 ff. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 123 


subordinate officers and magistrates, subject to the consent of the 
upper chamber. Adams wrote to Lee that by his plan a single 
month would be sufficient, without the least convulsion, to effect a 
total revolution in the government of any Colony, and that if they 
wished, as soon as affairs became more tranquil the legislators might 
pass a law giving the people the annual election of the Governor 
and upper chamber. 11 

The second important proposal for a constitution was less finished 
and far less sound. On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine’s “Common 
Sense” appeared in Philadelphia, producing instantly by its force 
of style and radical ideas a profound impression, finding readers 
everywhere, and running through edition after edition. One section, 
devoted to ill-digested ideas upon State and national government, 
led Adams to call Paine “a disastrous meteor.” This brilliant writer, 
he said, had a better hand in pulling down than in building; and he 
resent ed the rumor that he had written the pamphlet. Although 
he knew he was not the master of so simple and manly a style, he 
flattered himself that he should have made a more respectable figure 
as an architect. The writer seemed to have very inadequate ideas 
of what would make a proper State or national constitution. 12 No 
contrast, in fact, could be more striking than that between Adams 
and Paine. The one was a careful, methodical lawyer, Harvard- 
trained, deeply versed in political philosophy; the other a dismissed 
exciseman, with only a common school education, who had come to 
the Colonies from England but two years before, and had been glad 
to find employment with the Philadelphia book-seller Aitken at 
£25 a year. The one was a true statesman, who had to weigh every 
word he uttered; the other a genius whose pen was almost as 
irresponsible at times as it was brilliant. 

Paine’s notions of government were indeed erratic, though he 
had shrewdness enough to point out that the American strength 
was continental, not provincial. He advocated giving each Colony 
an annually elected legislature of one chamber, very numerous, and 
representing the parts of the commonwealth much more equitably 


£ Adams’wrS^Gates 1 ^ M^rch 23, 1776, that all the American misfortunes arose 
consequences. 


124 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


than had been the fact in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South 
Carolina. Each legislature should elect its own president, its 
business should be wholly domestic, and it should be subject to the 
authority of the Continental Congress. Adams was contemptuous 
of the sketchiness of these rapid proposals, while he was offended 
by the folly of the plan for a unicameral legislature engrossing all 
the executive powers of government. Though a radical in national 
politics, he was a conservative in this field; his conception of a good 
State government was one like Connecticut’s, but “not quite so 
popular.” 13 

This same month Adams published as a pamphlet a fuller expres¬ 
sion of his opinions upon a model State Constitution, in the form of 
a letter to George Wythe, bearing the title “Thoughts on Govern¬ 
ment.” Herein he argued at length against a unicameral legislature, 
and developed his old ideas regarding the legislative and executive 
branches. He believed that the lower house should be directly 
elected, but that it should choose from itself, the people at large, or 
both, a council of twenty or thirty men, to have a negative upon all 
legislation. All important executive officers should be chosen, during 
the crisis with Great Britain, by joint ballot of the two houses. 
Again, and with a sagacity rare in his generation, Adams declared 
for granting the Governor very wide powers. All elections, in his 
view, ought at first to be annual, for there was nowhere a more 
infallible maxim than that where annual elections end, there slavery 
begins. To this maxim the Bay State was to cling for more than 
a century and a quarter. He saw no objection, if the state had a 
sufficiency of men, to rotation in office—that is, to a rule that each 
man who had served for a definite period of say three years, should 
be ineligible during another period of equal length. 14 

Only one other theoretical plan for State government attracted 
national attention. Adams’s “Thoughts on Government,” issued 
anonymously, was forwarded to Virginia, where R. H. Lee, Patrick 
Henry, and Jefferson were exerting their influence in favor of a 
democratic but well-balanced constitution, and it created a stir. 
The aristocratic party was so alarmed that it had an anonymous 


13 Moncure D. Conway’s edition of Paine’s writings was issued in four volumes 
immediately after the publication of his admirable biography of Paine. In addition to 
Common Sense,” see the letter to George Washington dated Paris, July -To 1706 
wherein Paine attacks the Federal Constitution, and declares that he has always pre¬ 
ferred a plural executive to a single executive. always pre- 

34 Adams’s “Works,” IV, 193-200. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 125 

answer prepared in Philadelphia, and sent to Williamsburg for 
publication in the Virginia Gazette on the day on which the Con¬ 
vention met to prepare the State Constitution. This contemptible 
little tract, as R. H. Lee called it, was too confused and conservative 
to appeal to many. 15 Its ideas were taken, in a rough way, from 
the colonial form. It advocated the direct election of the lower 
house by the people; the election of an upper house of twenty-four 
by the lower chamber for life; and the appointment of all judges, 
military officers, and inferior civil officers by the Governor. The 
pamphlet, attributed to Carter Braxton, found readers in Philadel¬ 
phia and other cities, but it found no applause. Adams meanwhile 
had seized upon an opportunity of reiterating his views. In January, 
1776, the North Carolina delegates in Philadelphia had been author¬ 
ized to ask his advice upon State government, and he reembodied 
his counsel in a letter to John Penn. 16 

Meanwhile, as independence came nearer, the whole question 
became more urgent. When the spring of 1776 arrived, the New 
England and Virginia delegates believed that Congress ought to 
go much further than it had done the previous autumn in advising 
the formation of governments merely to serve during the continuance 
of the dispute with Great Britain. Adams, urging the necessity of 
realizing the theories of the wisest writers and erecting the whole 
building upon the broadest foundations, wanted a more advanced 
stand. Pressure from him and others, with the insistent attitude 
which several provincial governments were taking, led Congress 
finally to make the plunge. On May 10, 1776, it passed Adams’s 
resolution that all Colonies as yet unprovided with a permanent 
constitution suited to the new conditions should adopt such a 
government as would best conduce to the happiness and safety of 
their people. Five days later it added a preamble to this resolution 
which evinced a thorough-going hostility to the continuance of any 
British power in the Colonies. We have noted how gravely these 
acts affected the history of Pennsylvania. 17 

The work of making the new State Constitutions had already 
commenced. On the whole, it was not accompanied by prolonged 
heart-searching and deliberation. The debates were in most 
instances moulded by the general struggle between the radicals and 

16 Lee, “Letters,” I, 190-92; Henry, “Henry,” I, 411-13* 

18 Adams’s “Works,” I, 209; IV, 203 ff. . „ _ 

17 Cf. the Warren-Adams Letters, vol. 7 2 of the Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, I, 245 * 


126 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


conservatives. Moreover, and fortunately, the ideas of Adams or 
any other single American did not so much affect these instruments 
as to give them uniformity and prevent healthy experimentation. 
Jefferson states that the exchange of Provincial for State govern¬ 
ments was easily made, it being necessary to do little more than 
declare that the existing powers should be transferred to such 
and such new agencies. In a colony like Virginia or New York the 
mass of citizens had never given ten minutes’ thought to abstract 
governmental theory; Jefferson tells us that despite all the discussion 
of “Common Sense,” which sold 100,000 copies, the majority of 
men had never even heard of its ideas. The time for drawing up 
the new instruments was limited, the environment turbulent, and 
there were few practical guides, apart from the existing governments 
and charters, except the procedure and work of the English revo¬ 
lutionists of 1653 and 1689. The radicals were eager to gather 
the fruits of independence, and scholarly leaders like George Mason 
and John Adams applied their theories under many difficulties. 18 

What was the public attitude toward the initial efforts in Consti¬ 
tution-making? The two first Constitutions, those of New Hamp¬ 
shire and South Carolina, were especially hasty. This was because 
they were avowedly designed for the emergency, to last only until 
an accommodation with Great Britain could be obtained. In both 
Provinces there was strong conservative opposition, which had to 
be overcome by assurances that the step was merely temporary. 
New Hampshire had many men of substance, especially in Ports¬ 
mouth and Dover, sincerely attached to Great Britain, who grumbled 
that the Constitution adopted on January 5, 1776, “appears to us 
too much like setting up an independency on the Mother Country.” 19 
In South Carolina the objections were equally vigorous. When a 
committee of the Provincial Congress reported February 10 in 
favor of a Constitution, a hot debate ensued. The reason given 
for the recommendation was that the existing mode of conducting 
affairs did not fully secure peace and good order, which was true. 
But the fiery Christopher Gadsden was betrayed by his feelings 
into an avowal of approbation for Thomas Paine’s arguments in 
behalf of independence, and his speech was like a clap of thunder; 
even Henry Laurens, the chief advocate of a Constitution, protested 


I* £f. F. N. Thorpe, “Const. Hist, of the Amer. People,” I, 64 ff. 
19 Stackpole s “New Hampshire,” II, ch. V. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 127 

against the “indecent expressions” of Paine. 20 After the Constitu¬ 
tion had been prepared, some of the conservatives were still deeply 
loath to approve it, and were persuaded to yield only by the news 
that Parliament had passed an act of confiscation and seizure against 
the Americans as rebels. The instrument was finally accepted on 
March 26, when Rutledge was chosen President. 21 

The two other Colonies which drew up their Constitutions before 
the Declaration of Independence regarded them not as temporary, 
but permanent, instruments. When the Virginia Convention voted 
on May 15, 1776, to undertake the task, with not a dissenting voice, 
the popular approval was unmistakable. The Constitution was 
unanimously adopted on June 29. Next day the troops at Williams¬ 
burg were paraded and put through their maneuvers, a Continental 
flag was raised over the capitol, and in the evening the principal 
houses were illuminated. In New Jersey the Provincial Congress 
which met on June 10 at Burlington found a majority of members 
eager for independence and certain that it was coming. Petitions 
arrived from many towns praying for the establishment of a new 
government, and though other towns sent counter-memorials, repre¬ 
senting that any such step would obstruct a reconciliation with 
Great Britain, the weight of public opinion was clearly with the 
radicals. 22 The Provincial Congress decided June 21, by a vote 
of 54 to 3, that a Constitution should at once be written. Although 
it contained a clause declaring that it should become null and void 
if the old relations with the mother country were reestablished, its 
authors knew that it would be final. As a matter of fact, while 
the Constitutions of New Hampshire and South Carolina lasted 
only a few years, those of Virginia and New Jersey both endured 
more than a half century. 

Rapid action was made imperative in the remaining States by the 
Declaration of Independence. There were only six of these States, 
for the other three in New England had simply retained their 

20 Drayton’s “Memoirs of the Amer. Rev., II, 173; Wallace’s “Laurens,” 221. 

21 McCrady, “South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-80, 115. 

22 Cimon in the Pa. Packet of April 15, 1776, made a long appeal to the people of 
New Jersey for a new government. He wrote: “While we are groaning under a load 
of debt and grappling with the iron hand of oppression, the officers of the British 
government, which is employed in oppressing us, are maintained at the expense of the 
people in a splendor fit to dazzle the weak and timid, with a power of distributing 
profitable employments among a numerous class of dependents; so that the property 
and very sustenance of a large part of the community, in some measure depend upon 
them. In the meantime, the friends of liberty, employed in the greatest and noblest 
of all causes, crouch and wind through indirect paths. Resolves and recommendations 
of congresses and committees are put in place of the commands of a Legislature; the 
punishment of crimes is reserved to a standing committee, who are often feeble, 
sometimes oppressive. The boasted trial by jury is sinking to decay. Anarchy 
threatens us.” 


128 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


charter governments, though Massachusetts did not regard hers as 
more than a stop-gap. By the end of August popular Conventions 
were at work writing Constitutions in the three adjoining States 
of Pennslyvania, Maryland, and Delaware, while a call had gone 
out for the election of such a body in North Carolina. New York 
and Georgia framed their instruments in 1777, the delay in both 
being due to the exigencies of the war. 

In New York especially the delay was quite accidental. The 
fourth Provincial Congress of that commonwealth began work upon 
a Constitution early—July 9, 1776—and had the times been favor¬ 
able, would have carried its labors to a conclusion before any other 
State of the middle group. But in midsummer Howe’s army carried 
the war into New York, and the Congress was harried northward 
from town to town. Georgia was not actually invaded, but her 
exposed position invited the rapid and easy conquest which came 
two years later; and faced by perils from without and a Tory menace 
from within, she could not move fast. In midsummer of 1776 
President Bulloch initiated action looking toward a true Constitu¬ 
tion in place of the rough set of “Rules and Regulations” under 
which she was then governed. He proclaimed the election of a 
convention to meet in Savannah in October, but though the body 
sat at the appointed time, its other duties were pressing, the existing 
machinery functioned well, and nothing was accomplished for some 
months. 23 

In no State was the new fundamental law the work of a specially 
elected Constitutional Convention, such as is now usually entrusted 
with revision in this country. The war would have made the creation 
of any such body difficult, even had the plan occurred to the people; 
but the idea had no currency. It was a conception of slow develop¬ 
ment, just as was the conception of a State Constitution as some¬ 
thing rising far superior to statutory law. The Virginia Constitution 
was simply Chapters I and II of the legislative statutes, and natu¬ 
rally could be written by a legislative body. Americans then believed 
that the framing of a State government required only a little more 
deliberation than the framing of a civil code. Nor did a single 
member of the Union submit its Constitution to popular vote. The 
Continental Congress did impress upon the State, as the compact 
theory of Locke obviously required, the desirability of calling a 

23 Stevens’s “Hist, of Georgia,” II, 297-98. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 129 


“full and free representation of the people” to draft the new organic 
laws; but that was all. 24 

Three States, however, did not even call a full and free representa¬ 
tion in the sense of holding a special election, with the work of 
Constitution-making in view. In South Carolina, Virginia, and 
New Jersey, revolutionary legislatures which, had been chosen 
without general thought of constitutional tasks decided, under the 
pressure of events, to undertake them. Some members of the 
South Carolina Congress wanted a new election, but they were 
overruled; after all, the body was writing only a temporary instru¬ 
ment. In New Jersey nobody thought of protesting that the legis¬ 
lature lacked proper authority. It had just been chosen, and if a 
special election for a constitutional convention had been held, the 
counties would probably have returned the same men. The situation 
was the same in Virginia. The election of April, 1776, witnessed a 
warm contest for many seats, and the people perfectly trusted the 
delegates who next month decided to draft an organic law for the 
Old Dominion. 

In no fewer than seven States, however, during 1775-77, a special 
election in contemplation of the writing of a Constitution was 
actually held. Though New Hampshire acted so early, she took 
special pains to make her election (November, 1775) successful, a 
committee of the Provincial Congress drawing up an elaborate 
plan for equitable representation. New York’s Congress of May, 
1776, hesitated, some members, like John Morin Scott, wishing 
it to draft a Constitution without further delay, while others thought 
it would be sufficient to arrange for the election of additional 
delegates. But it was finally decided to hold a new election, for in 
that manner the unmistakable, assent of the patriot citizens would 
be obtained, and it duly took place at the end of the month. 25 
In Pennsylvania, as we have seen, a city committee thrust the 
Assembly aside and called a Province-wide conference which sat 
in Philadelphia on June 18, and laid down regulations governing 
the election of a State Convention which was to meet within a 
month—a body chosen primarily to write a Constitution, but also 
to make laws. Little Delaware was hard on her sister’s heels. The 
Provincial Assembly in July asked the three counties to send ten 


24 cf R. s. Hoar, “Constitutional Conventions,” ch. i. 

25 c. Z. Lincoln, ^Constitutional History of New York, 


I, 478 ff. 


130 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


delegates each to a convention meeting at Newcastle on August 27, 
and a warm contest was waged between the radicals and conserva¬ 
tives to gain control of it. Maryland’s Convention early in July 
coupled its own declaration of independence with a call for a new 
Convention which was to begin work the middle of following month 
at Annapolis upon a Constitution. President Bulloch of Georgia, 
in giving notice of an election that autumn, impressed upon the 
voters the fact that the new body would open “business of the 
highest consequence for the government and welfare of the 
people.” 26 

But it was in North Carolina that the special election had, next 
to Pennsylvania, the greatest significance and heat. That State 
attempted at first to dispense with it, and like her neighbors on each 
side simply allow her revolutionary legislature to undertake the task 
offhand. After passing its resolutions of April, 1776, declaring for 
a severance of the ties with England, North Carolina’s Congress 
appointed a committee (April 13) to prepare a Constitution. But 
this move proved abortive. After a bitter struggle the radicals in 
the Congress showed the greater strength; their committeemen 
determined that it would be best to draw up what one spectator 
called a purely democratic form of government; and on April 25 
they laid before the Congress certain resolutions as a foundation 
for the Constitution. They seemed about to press ahead of all the 
rest of the South. 

Then, suddenly, at a show of intense opposition in some quarters, 
their leaders concluded that it would be unwise to press so contro¬ 
versial a subject. They could not afford, they decided, to risk 
antagonizing, by a hasty move, a large group of influential and 
comparatively wealthy conservatives both within and without the 
Congress. The committee had discovered that there were many 
complexities in Constitution-making. Wise Samuel Johnston has 
left us a letter picturing it sitting nightly, cudgelling its brains over 
proposal after proposal too tedious to name, and unable to overcome 
the primary obstacle—“how to establish a check on the repre¬ 
sentatives of the people, to prevent their assuming more power 
than would be consistent with the liberties of the people.” One 
motive of the committee in abandoning this first effort was the 
feeling that the Province was too inexperienced to proceed until 

26 Stevens’s “Hist, of Georgia,” II, 297. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 131 


the greater Colonies had shown the way; but the chief reason was 
its fear of a schism in the patriot party. 27 

It was unquestionably to the advantage of the radicals to wait, 
for they grew constantly stronger. In the late summer (August 9, 
1776), the Council of Safety recommended that the people pay the 
closest attention to the coming election of a new Congress, for it 
would not only make laws but form a new Constitution. 28 A vigor¬ 
ous contest followed. One issue between the radicals and conserva¬ 
tives, between men like Thomas Person and Samuel Johnston, lay 
in the question how far the right of suffrage ought to be restricted 
by property or other qualifications. The radicals wanted the judges 
under close popular control, and the Governor a mere figurehead, 
to which aims the conservatives objected. A good deal of bad 
temper had already been displayed, for Johnston, William Hooper, 
James Iredell, and other conservatives voiced a frank contempt for 
the provisional government. Its leaders, they said, were a set 
of demagogues, sacrificing every principle for popular support, and 
they would give such men no aid. One argument on the radical 
side was that the success of the Revolution might depend upon the 
adoption of a government that would enlist the enthusiasm of the 
poor. Should men be asked to die for freedom, and yet be told 
they could not vote? The property restrictions in the temporary 
government had helped the Tories to gain a hold upon excluded 
groups, but a reform might win over even the Highlanders of 
Cape Fear. With a treasury empty, and the army ranks to be filled, 
should they write a Constitution unacceptable to the common 
people? But other and less fair appeals were used. On the one 
side, speakers asserted that a conservative victory would mean 
little less than a monarchy; on the other, that a radical victory 
would mean the rule of the mob, On election day, October 15, 
1776, the radicals decisively triumphed, winning four seats in five. 29 

But even where a special election was held, just how “full and 
free” was it; how far did it go in recognizing previously neglected 
sections and classes of the commonwealth? The answer reveals 
some striking contrasts. In several States the revolutionary legis- 

27 n C Records, X, 1034-1037; Sikes, “Transition in North Carolina,” 60; Ashe, 

“Hist of N C.,” I, 527 ft.; McRee’s “Iredell,” I, 276-79. . 

28 w c Records, X, 696. The electorate could have been trusted to keep this in 
mind ' The object of the radical Council was rather to put its adherents on guard 
aeainst any attempt by the conservatives to carry die election. 

^29 Tames Sprunt Hist. Publications, XI, No. 2 (Frank Nash, The North Carolina 
Constitution of 1776 and its Makers”). There was some disorder on election day; 
N. C. Records, X, 933 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


132 

latures which wrote the Constitutions were thoroughly democratic 
bodies, representing every section; in others they showed no advance 
beyond the undemocratic colonial legislatures. 

New Hampshire set an admirable example in the pains she took 
to be fair in apportioning representation. A committee which 
planned the election gave every adult male taxpayer the vote, made 
every man possessing £200 in real estate eligible to a seat, and 
arranged for the distribution of 89 members in such a manner that 
each of the five counties would enjoy a voice commensurate with 
its population. The limitation of membership to this number was 
in itself healthful, for many of the smallest towns demanded one 
delegate apiece, which would have swollen the Congress to unman¬ 
ageable size. New York’s Congress by July of 1776 had also 
become a much more truly representative body—if we exclude 
consideration of the Tories—than the old Provincial Assembly. 
The latter had contained 35 members; the Congress had 107, 
although one county—Richmond, or Staten Island, which was 
loyalist and the hills of which were white with British tents when 
the session opened—was not represented at all. 30 Moreover, the 
Assembly had been arbitrarily constituted, New York county having 
four members and the others two each. In the Congress which wrote 
the Constitution there happened to be a jus ter approximation of 
county membership to county population, New York county having 
25 members, Albany n, Ulster 8, and the thinly settled counties 
of Cumberland and Gloucester 3 and 2 respectively. Every patriot 
freeman in New York city and Albany, and every freeholder outside, 
had a vote. 

In Pennsylvania there occurred a dramatic rectification of the 
injustice so long done the frontier counties. In 1775 the Colonial 
Assembly had contained 41 members, of whom 26 were from the 
southeastern section, the old, long-settled, wealthy part of the 
Province, and fifteen from the newer western counties, although 
the latter now held a majority of the people. The addition of 17 
new members early in 1776, as an incident of the tense struggle 
between radicals and conservatives, raised the western representation 
to 28 and that of the east to 30, almost a balance. Now, in 
apportioning representation in the convention to frame a Constitu¬ 
tion, the radical leaders gave each county and the city of Phila- 


30 C. Z. Lincoln, “Constitutional History of New York,” I, 484-86. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 133 

delphia six members. This meant that Philadelphia and the three 
eastern counties had 24, the eight western counties 48. The 
situation had been almost completely reversed in the two years, 
for whereas a third of the members had come from the newer 
counties under the former regime, now they sent two thirds. As for 
the qualifications of voters, in one respect they were liberalized. 
Any taxpayer, or small property holder, could cast his ballot for 
members of the Convention. But it was added that none might 
vote save those who approved the movement for a new Constitution, 
a stipulation that shut out great numbers of conservatives . 31 

Virginia, however, and more notably still South Carolina, illus¬ 
trated all the old injustices in representation. In the Old Dominion 
each county, whether its population was large or small, sent two 
members to the Constitution-making body, just as it had done to 
the Colonial legislature. This practice was so palpably unfair 
that it had been condemned by Ward of Rhode Island in the first 
Continental Congress . 32 The first national census gave to Berkeley 
County, west of the Blue Ridge, a total population of 19,713, of 
whom only 2,932 were slaves; it gave to Elizabeth City County, 
between the James and the York, only 3,450 people, of whom 1,876 
were slaves. Other discrepancies as great or greater could be 
named, and their total effect was much to the advantage of the 
Tidewater section, where the counties were smaller than in the 
west, and—with their large plantations—had fewer people. In 
South Carolina the same sectional injustice was still more glaringly 
evident. The revolutionary legislature which drafted the Consti¬ 
tution had 144 members from the lowlands, and 40 from the uplands, 
though the latter region contained three fourths of the white 
population. Maryland constituted her Convention in the same 
artificial manner. Each county was allowed to elect four delegates, 
except Frederick, which was given more; yet the first national 
census showed that Maryland had five counties of more than 20,000 
people, and three of fewer than 10,000. 

Yet after all, it was much less important that the constitution¬ 
making congresses be carefully representative of every class and 
section than that they should contain the ablest leaders and thinkers 
of every State. Representation of brains, not polls, was wanted. 
It did not greatly matter in Virginia whether Fairfax and Albemarle 

8 * “Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790.’’ 

82 Burnett. “Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, I, 05. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


134 

Counties had delegations strictly proportioned to the number of 
their voters; it mattered immensely whether Fairfax chose some 
insignificant delegate, or the learned George Mason, and whether 
Albemarle sent a nonentity up to Williamsburg, or named Thomas 
Jefferson. Two of the States which had the most democratic 
conventions, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, adopted Constitu¬ 
tions defective in comparison with Virginia’s. 

Upon the whole, the personnel of the several congresses was very 
high, including the most distinguished men available, and the 
brightest luminaries of the Revolution. In two States, and two 
only, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, factional quarrels kept 
some of the best Whig leaders out of the assemblages. The former 
included Franklin, and the latter Richard Caswell, but no others 
of distinction. New Hampshire’s Congress was also mediocre in 
membership. The historian Belknap, who was acquainted with 
many of the delegates, tells us that most of them “knew nothing 
of the theory of government, and had never before been concerned 
in public business,” which was true. 33 The president was a prac¬ 
tising physician and man of substance, Matthew Thornton, the 
most influential member was the experienced squire and legislator, 
Meshech Weare, the most active was the handsome merchant John 
Langdon; but only John Sullivan was then or later a figure of 
Continental prominence. 

But South Carolina’s Constitution-makers included the whole 
roll of scholars and gentlemen who had guided that State as it 
entered upon the Revolution—John Rutledge, the most eminent 
statesman south of Virginia; the irrepressible Gadsden; Henry 
Laurens, who in youth had been a warm friend to Gadsden, but was 
of a contrastingly cautious, thoughtful temperament, and had 
bitterly quarreled with him before the Revolution; Charles Pinckney, 
still more conservative than Laurens; Rawlins Lowndes, a bold and 
brilliant planter, who as speaker three years before had signally 
vindicated the dignity of the House in opposition to the Council; 
and W. H. Drayton, who had done so much to see that South 
Carolina played a spirited part in the continental crisis. 34 Similarly, 
the best brains of the State were employed in Maryland. The 
committee appointed to draft the bill of rights and plan of govem- 

33 Jeremy Belknap, “History of New Hampshire.” 

34 McCrady, “South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-80,” no; Drayton, “Memoirs,” 
II, ch. 3. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 135 

ment included Matthew Tilghman, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 
Charles Carroll the barrister, William Paca, later Governor, and 
the energetic, erratic Samuel Chase. 35 The conventions of Delaware 
and Georgia each included one figure of more than local importance, 
Thomas McKean and Archibald Bulloch. As we shall see later, 
New York called together a body of strikingly able men, including 
Jay, Duane, Robert R. Livingston, and Gouverneur Morris. 

Somewhat strangely, the personnel of the Virginia Convention 
was thought by several contemporary judges to be disappointing. 
Patrick Henry and Thomas Ludwell Lee said so. George Mason 
feared “a thousand ridiculous and impracticable proposals” from 
the body, and a heterogeneous, jarring result, while Landon Carter 
despondently wrote Washington that ignorant men from all over 
the Colony had pressed forward to claim seats, and that the Con¬ 
vention showed an appalling lack of experience. Superficially, there 
was a good deal to support this dark view. Peyton Randolph was 
now dead; Washington was at the head of the army; Jefferson, 
R. H. Lee, Harrison, and Wythe were kept away by their duties 
in the Continental Congress, though Lee visited Williamsburg 
before the convention finished its work. Nevertheless, the body 
included and in the end was guided by a group of the highest 
capacity. 36 

Among the conservatives were the veteran Edmund Pendleton, 
who presided over the gathering with a dignity which impressed 
Madison and others; R. C. Nicholas, who so long before as 1765 
had stood with Pendleton in opposing Patrick Henry’s resolutions 
on the Stamp Act; and Richard Bland, who also had then supported 
the Crown. The progressives came forward in high spirits, eager 
for the victory they were destined to win. Among them was Patrick 
Henry, whom all respected and many admired, but who was not a 
great constructive statesman; he had mastered Adams’s pamphlet, 
and was determined to attack any “bias to aristocracy.” There 
was James Madison, a new member, not long previously graduated 
from Princeton, who in spite of his painful diffidence and insig¬ 
nificant stature quickly made a deep mark. “In Convention debate, 
said Edmund Randolph, also a young member, “his lips were never 
unsealed except to some members who happened to sit near him; 


36 E. Boyle, “Distinguished Marylanders” 60, 88. 

36 Rowland’s “Mason,” I, 226; 4 Amer. Archives, VI, 39 °* 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


136 

and he who had once partaken of the rich banquet of his remarks, 
did not fail to wish to sit daily within reach of his conversation.” 
But above all the others there towered George Mason. The wealthy 
owner of Gunston Hall, a mansion that looked south over the 
Potomac just off the main road that traversed the province from 
Maryland to North Carolina, the close neighbor and friend of 
Washington, a descendant of Cavaliers, Mason was by no means 
a radical. But he had read and thought much on political questions, 
and had imbibed liberal ideas. He had made himself master of the 
English historians and writers on government. Free from personal 
ambition, he stood unflinchingly by his convictions. His wealth, 
social position, learning, experience—he had been in the House as 
early as 1759—and his ability, made Virginians instinctively look 
up to him. 37 

All these Constitution-making bodies were at times painfully 
preoccupied with the exigent business of making laws, raising funds, 
levying war, and carrying on the other activities of the States. Not 
one was able to devote itself exclusively to the drafting of the 
fundamental law. The New York Convention was assisting Wash¬ 
ington with all its energy till he was driven from the State, and 
then had to devote itself to rallying the patriots in the fastnesses 
of the upper Hudson. Not only did the British invasion present 
a multitude of urgent problems, but it drew members away from 
the convention to their threatened home communities. In Novem¬ 
ber, 1776, the body had to send a special notification to the county 
committees requesting the attendance of all delegates without delay, 
and in general, its business was done by about one-third the 
members. 

The Pennsylvania Convention was bitterly attacked by the con¬ 
servatives for its extensive use of the lawmaking power, to retain 
which it was accused of prolonging its session unconscionably. 
It controlled the militia, appointed a Council of Safety, dropped the 
conservative Dickinson from the Continental Congress, and made a 
temporary boundary agreement with Virginia. In Virginia the 
Convention raised 1,300 men, issued treasury notes for £100,000, 
annulled certain great private land purchases recently made from 
the Indians, initiated a revision of the laws, compensated one 

87 Lingley, “Transition in Virginia,” ch. 7; Rowland’s “Mason,” passim: Eckenrode. 
cn- ?. See the full pen-portraits of the Virginia leaders in H. B. Grigsby “The 
Virginia Convention of 1776.” 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 137 

Lucretius Pritchett for the killing of a slave, and delivered one 
Moses Riggs from jail—a queer medley of functions. The strangest 
combination of roles, however, was that of the South Carolina 
Congress, which was at once the old revolutionary legislature, the 
constitutional convention, and the new legislature. On the morning 
of March 25, 1776, the gentlemen gathered in the Charleston 
capitol were acting in the first two capacities; that afternoon they 
had become an Assembly under the new government, and a body of 
electors for the Legislative Council, or upper house. 38 

Partly because of this necessity of dividing their time between 
legislative and constitutional tasks, partly because it was the natural 
procedure, the conventions or congresses deputed the drafting of 
the new basic instruments to select committees. In some States 
there were two committees, one to prepare the Constitution proper 
and one the Bill of Rights. It was in this same manner, of course, 
that the Declaration of Independence was written. The Continental 
Congress appointed a committee of five to bring in a draft of it. 
Of these five, Jefferson was induced to take up the pen, Adams 
arguing that three reasons pointed to him as the man for the task; 
he was a Virginian, he was popular and trusted, and he was a 
finished writer. In a majority of States we can trace the main 
features of the Constitutions to a few hands, and no part of their 
story is more interesting than that which exhibits the actual mode 
of composition. 

Eleven men formed the committee chosen to prepare the first 
draft of the South Carolina Constitution. There is every reason 
for believing that John Rutledge dominated it, and that its moderate 
majority followed his ideas. He had been in Congress and talked 
interestedly with John Adams upon constitutional questions; and 
the careful conservatism which the Constitution expressed in all 
its terms harmonized with his views. In New Jersey, by contrast, 
the dominating figure—if we may trust tradition, our only guide— 
was not an eminent State leader, but a humble cleric and scholar. 
The committee of ten there appointed included the Rev. Jacob 
Green, its chairman, who was pastor of the Presbyterian Church 
at Hanover, and a man of varied talents; John Cleves Symmes, 
later a leader in the settlement of Ohio; Lewis Ogden, Jonathan D. 
Sergeant, and Theophilus Elmer. Green is reputed to have been 

38 McCrady, “South Carolina in the Revolution, I775-8o,” ii 5 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


138 

the principal author, receiving assistance from a more noted Presby¬ 
terian divine, Dr. John Witherspoon. 39 We do not know which 
particular member of the Maryland committee deserves most of 
the credit for that State’s instrument. But we may be sure that 
the strong personalities of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, William 
Paca, and Samuel Chase all had some share in the result. To Chase 
has been ascribed the most prominent feature of the new govern¬ 
ment, the indirect election of the Senate. 40 As for Delaware, the 
honor of the authorship of her Constitution has been disputed by 
admirers of George Read and Thomas McKean. Read was president 
of the convention and chairman of the drafting committee, while 
McKean was the leading radical. The best evidence supports the 
claim of McKean, who himself explicitly told Caesar Rodney years 
later that he wrote the draft at Newcastle “in a tavern without a 
book or assistance.” 41 

Virginia appointed a committee larger than Delaware’s whole 
convention, thirty-two, but as we shall see, a single hand wrote 
most of both the Constitution and Bill of Rights. North Carolina 
imitated her more powerful sister by choosing another large drafting 
committee, at first of eighteen and later twenty-eight members. 
It is probable that Willie Jones, in whom were combined an Eton 
education, good general capacity, a marked taste for horse-racing, 
hunting, and other sports, and a flaming radicalism, did as much 
to shape the instrument as Caswell. This was the same Jones who 
a dozen years later, when North Carolina was debating the adoption 
of the Federal Constitution, set up as a very mischievous authority 
on constitutional matters. Other radicals, such as Thomas Person 
and Abner Nash, doubtless also had a finger in the pie. 42 Georgia 
made an appallingly simple job of her first Constitution, merely 
perpetuating, with a few changes and additions, the rough temporary 
government under which her affairs were already being administered. 
If the framework had been more creditable, we would be more 
willing to credit the sagacious Archibald Bulloch with it. 

In general, the Constitutions were put together with amazing 
rapidity, though the necessity of attending to other affairs some¬ 
times made the lapse of time between the commencement of the 

39 Elmer, “Constitution and Govt, of N. J.,” 21 ff.; Lee’s “New Jersey,” II, ch. 25. 

*° Annual Report Amer. Hist. Assn., 1895, p. 129 ff. 

41 Read, “Life of Read,” 182-83; Papers Hist. Soc. of Del., II, No. 17. 

42 Cf. North Carolina Booklet, No. 7; “Our First Constitution,” by E. W. Sikes. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 139 

task and its completion very long. New Hampshire required only 
a week—the undertaking was begun December 28, 1775, and finished 
January 5, 1776. New Jersey was almost equally rapid. Her 
Convention voted on June 21 to essay a Constitution, the first 
draft was reported for debate June 26, and on July 2, after discus¬ 
sion in committee of the whole, it was accepted. This speed owed 
something to the pressure of events, for the debate was interrupted 
by the news that Howe had landed his army at Sandy Hook. Some 
were for adopting the instrument at once, while others were for 
deferring it until further consideration was possible, and it bore 
the marks of haste. 

In Maryland the actual committee-work of drafting the Constitu¬ 
tion, with its Bill of Rights, consumed almost a month, but it was 
two months later before the Convention, which was in adjournment 
part of the time and busied with war problems, finally accepted it. 
South Carolina required six weeks to frame her Constitution, and 
North Carolina only five. In Pennslyvania the labor, intermittently 
pursued, endured from the heat of midsummer to the cold of winter 
(July 18-November 7, 1776). But Delaware needed less than a 
month: her Convention met August 27, the draft of the instrument 
was ready in not quite three weeks, and only five days’ debate was 
given to it before it was approved. Virginia, moreover, with one 
of the best Constitutions of all, and a Bill of Rights that served 
as a model for the rest of the nation, required but six weeks (May 
15-June 29, 1776), interrupted by other activities. The time 
consumed was no index of the merits of the different instruments. 43 

II. Constitutions of a Radical Character 

Everywhere from north to south the debate on the Constitutions 
evoked a struggle between ultra-democratic and aristocratic opinion. 
To define the precise tenets and composition of these radical and 
conservative parties is difficult, for in a time of crisis men’s views 
alter rapidly, and there were many varying shades of sentiment. 
But in general the aristocratic element believed in a careful balance 
of the powers of government, so that the executive would possess a 
genuine ability to direct the administration, while the judiciary 

43 n H Provincial, State, and Town Papers, VIII, i ff.; Minutes of the New Jersey 
Provincial Congress and Council of Safety, 445 ff-! N. C. Records, X, 913 ff-; etc. 
Georgia required four months; Revolutionary Records, I, 282 ff. 


140 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


would be capable of a firm protection of property. It held that 
in the arrangements of government a due respect should be paid 
to wealth: that property qualifications for the ballot and office, 
such as had prevailed in most Colonies, were indispensable, and 
that it would be well if the old propertied governing classes—the 
rich Virginia planters, the merchants and planters of South Carolina, 
the merchants and large landholders of southeastern Pennsylvania— 
continued to hold the tiller of state. To this element the inequalities 
of representation in some Colonies, the denial of the ballot to 
many freemen in others, were not abuses but time-tested and 
valuable features of government. 

The ultra-democratic leaders gave these conservatives the con¬ 
temptuous appellation of dons, patricians, or nobles, the devotees 
of a vicious class tyranny. They invited them to emigrate to 
England, where there were real gentlemen, not cheap imitations. 
Radicals like George Bryan, Willie Jones, and Alexander Gillon 
proclaimed the sentiment which has so often been used as a battle- 
cry in our politics: “Let the people rule!” This could be effected, 
they believed, by a concentration of governmental power in the 
legislature, and especially its popular house, which colonial experi¬ 
ence had shown to be always with the people. Annually elected, 
the legislators could be trusted to attempt no tyranny, while the 
governor would be dangerous unless he were given a brief term 
and made a mere figurehead, and the judges unless their removal 
was made easy. 

John Dickinson, Carter Braxton, and Samuel Johnston denounced 
the advocates of universal manhood suffrage as the sponsors of a 
“mob” government and of “levelling.” John Adams, who wanted 
all government well-balanced, but also wanted it moderately demo¬ 
cratic, replied by adducing such terrible examples as the republic 
of Bilbao, where the officers, popularly elected, had to have property 
worth a thousand ducats, and an unstained lineage. “Thus we see 
the people themselves have established by law a contracted aris¬ 
tocracy, under the appearance of a liberal democracy,” warned 
Adams. “Americans, beware!” 44 

One of the sharpest struggles occurred in North Carolina, where 
the election of the constitution-making body, as we have seen, 
resulted in a sweeping victory for the radicals. They even defeated 

44 Adams’s “Works,” IV, 312, 313. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 141 

Samuel Johnston in Chowan County, an exploit which they cele¬ 
brated by burning him in effigy. When the 169 members met in 
the village of Halifax on November 12 they chose Richard Caswell 
and Cornelius Harnett, two leaders in the revolutionary movement, 
and men of democratic leanings, president and vice-president. The 
conservatives were represented by such gentlemen as William 
Hooper and Allen Jones, while Samuel Johnston himself was in 
Halifax near the end of the session, on business for the State 
treasury. But the conservatives were not listened to. “Everyone 
who has the least pretensions to be a gentleman,” reported Johnston, 
“is borne down per ignobile vulgus —a set of men without reading, 
experience, or principles to govern them.” 45 In the drafting com¬ 
mittee the radical element was much the stronger. The one strong 
conservative influence present lay in the models which the Congress 
had before it—the plan drawn up by John Adams, which called for 
a careful separation of departments, the New England charters, 
the new Constitution of New Jersey, and probably those of Mary¬ 
land and Virginia as well. Careful study was given these models, 
but they were not followed. 

Democracy here overleaped itself, and to an excess of radicalism 
we must ascribe the highly unsatisfactory nature of the North 
Carolina Constitution. Its chief fault was that it gave the Governor 
altogether too little power. No more helpless executive existed 
anywhere south of Pennsylvania. The Congress was at pains to 
make sure that he would be a fit man—he had to be at least thirty, 
a resident of North Carolina for at least five years, a sound stipula¬ 
tion in a State receiving heavy immigration, and the owner of a 
£1000 freehold. But this carefully selected gentleman was hedged 
about by a thousand restrictions. His term was one year only, and 
he was not to enjoy more than three terms in any six successive 
years, lest he become another Caesar; while he was surrounded by 
an executive council, which was required to keep a journal and on 
demand lay it before the House. He had not even a suspensive 
veto, nor could he appoint a single officer of importance. In short, 
he was simply an ornament, with authority to grant pardons and 
reprieves, temporary powers as commander in chief, and a vague 
general dignity. All this indicates in part a natural reaction from 
the difficulties of the colonists with the old royal governors, Tryon 


45 McRee’s “Iredell,” I, ch. 9. 


142 THE AMERICAN STATES 

and Martin, and in part the radical theory that all authority should 
be centered in the direct legislative representatives of the people. 46 

“What powers, sir,” inquired one of Hooper’s constituents after 
the Congress rose, “were conferred upon the Governor?” “Power,” 
snorted Hooper, “to sign a receipt for his salary.” 47 The first man 
to luxuriate in this power was Richard Caswell, who was given a 
temporary appointment till the first Assembly met in 1777. 

All officers of importance were elected by the legislature, including 
judges and even the justices of the peace. The legislature was to 
issue military commissions, and one clause suggests that it was 
intended that after a time it should name a commander-in-chief 
to take the place of the Governor at the head of the armed forces. 
The Governor had not even the right to call the legislature in special 
session in time of emergency, a gross defect in the organic law of 
a State liable to attack at any hour. We shall see how bitterly it 
rued this omission when the army of Cornwallis stood upon its 
borders. Apart from these fundamental faults, the Constitution 
had certain good features. One was the grant to the judges of a 
tenure during good behavior. Another was the clause inserted in 
the bill of rights guaranteeing religious freedom. Thomas Jones, 
a conservative, had provoked an angry debate by demanding a 
favored position for the Episcopal Church, but this was defeated; 
the only bit of illiberalism permitted in this connection being a 
provision that none but Protestants might hold office. Another 
commendable feature, a true evidence of democracy, was the enlarge¬ 
ment of the electorate. Any adult freeman resident in the State 
for a year could vote for members of the lower house, while any 
freeholder owning fifty acres—a trifle in that half empty State— 
could vote for a Senator. Members of the House had to possess one 
hundred acres, and those of the Senate three hundred; for not even 
North Carolina could yet waive this restriction on office. 

But it was not in a State where the great mass of the people were 
upon almost the same economic and social level, but in States of 
heavy inequalities of wealth and culture, that the struggle between 
men of aristocratic and ultra-democratic views was fiercest. We 
meet it in its tensest form in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Here, 
moreover, it found a spectacular stage. These were the two greatest 

40 F. N. Thorpe, “Federal and State Constitutions, Charters, and Other Organic 
Laws,” V, 2787 ff. This set, giving the text of all Constitutions, will not be quoted 
again. 

47 Wheeler, “Historical Sketches of N. C.,” II, 288. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 143 

and richest States, to which, since Massachusetts postponed her 
Constitution until near the close of the Revolution, all eyes were 
turned. 

The result of the contest in the two was strikingly different. In 
Virginia it gave birth to a partly balanced government, and in 
Pennsylvania to a shockingly unbalanced form. In Virginia the 
really unhealthful abuses in the colonial laws and institutions were 
for the most part singled out and attacked; in Pennsylvania new 
abuses were planted in the name of democracy. This difference 
arose in part from the fact that in Virginia the progressive Whig^ 
had early gained control of the Province and guided it steadily 
towards a total revolution, while in Pennsylvania the radicals and 
conservatives were more evenly matched, and the latter were over¬ 
thrown by a violent coup just before the Constitution was adopted. 
It was a natural birth in the one State, a convulsive production in 
the other. In part the difference arose from the fact that Virginia’s 
colonial constitution, with its bicameral legislature, offered a better 
foundation than Pennsylvania’s unicameral legislature. But this is 
to be said for Pennsylvania, that her innovations were highly valuable 
as experiments. 

The Americans as a whole had reason to echo John Adams’s 
statement that “we all look up to Virginia for examples.” Her 
Constitution was written at just the moment the State was ripe 
for it. With Dunmore’s forces defeated in the field and expelled 
from Norfolk, the revolution there had swept into a calmer current. 
The once unchecked county committees, ruling in many communi¬ 
ties with a high hand, began to be superseded by courts of inquiry, 
and juries were summoned as in the old days of British rule. Men 
could stop to think of the future government of Virginia . 48 

As this lull fell in the conflict between the patriots and British, 
there came into distinct view the clash between the conservative 
and radical parties. Should the new government be friendliest to 
the rich or the poor, to the lowland planters and churchmen or the 
small farmers and dissenters of the uplands and Shenandoah? The 
aristocratic landholders who dominated Tidewater Virginia would 
have been well satisfied with the Crown government had only the 
London authorities pursued Walpole’s noli tangere system, had the 

48 Eckenrode, 147 ff. The courts of inquiry had the same connection as the com¬ 
mittees with the central Committee of Safety. 


144 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


governors kept on dozing, and the tax measures been left to originate 
exclusively in the colony. But by 1775 the radicals of both the 
Tidewater and the uplands would have found the domestic govern¬ 
ment highly irritating even had the Crown kept its hands off. It 
was a government of inequalities in taxation, representation, and 
economic opportunity—a government sheltering unhealthful growths 
like the church establishment and the laws of primogeniture. The 
progressives did not intend to lose their opportunity to give Virginia 
a system fostering greater political and social equality. The “vicious 
points’' in State affairs, as Jefferson put it, “urgently required 
reformation.” 

John Adams’s plan and that attributed to Carter Braxton 49 
by no means stood alone as proposed outlines when the Virginia 
Convention set to work. R. H. Lee, then in Congress, drew up a 
brief scheme, and Meriweather Smith a more ambitious one, but 
neither survives. We can best judge of Lee’s views by a sentence 
in one of his letters: “Abridged duration, temperate revenue, and 
every unnecessary power withheld, are potent means of preserving 
integrity in public men and for securing the community from the 
dangerous ambition ’that too often governs the public mind.” 
Throughout his life, Lee feared and hated centralized government, 
as he showed when he opposed the Federal Constitution. He would 
have made the ’legislature all-powerful, and wished the Governor 
surrounded by a council of state; but he would have partially 
checked the legislature by carefully differentiating the two houses. 50 
Jefferson, also in Congress, sent an outline of his ideas to Williams¬ 
burg, but it arrived too late to exert much influence. A “Govern¬ 
ment Scheme” was published in the Virginia Gazette for'May 10, 
and supposition, but nothing more, assigns it to Patrick Henry. 
It called for a popularly elected lower house, chosen as in the old 
colonial days, an upper house of 24, chosen for seven years by the 
lower, and a Governor, chosen for one year only by the two houses. 
The Governor was to have little power, and the author of this 
scheme, much like Lee, wished him hampered by a council. This 
plan went as far towards ultra-democracy as Carter Braxton’s went 
toward aristocracy. 

When the Convention was midway in its work, still another plan 

48 We have already described both; the text of Braxton’s is in 4 Amer. Archives, 
VI, 748 ff. 

80 Lee’s “Letters,” I, 176-80. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 145 

was offered in the Virginia Gazette (June 7) in an article headed 
“Loose Thoughts on Government” by “Democraticus.” It also 
carried the principles of democracy to an undue extreme. A lower 
house elected annually by the people, an upper house elected by 
committees of twenty-one in each county, and a figurehead of a 
Governor, chosen out of the upper house by the committees—such 
were the main agencies suggested. But it was notable for the vigor 
with which it called for a fair apportionment of legislators, and the 
abolition of primogeniture and entail. The propriety of an equal 
representation must occur to every one who does not favor one part 
of the community over another, it said; and it proposed putting 
“an end to proprietaries, entails, and other monopolies of land, those 
remains of ancient tyranny, which will always be incompatible 
with the spirit of equality and right government.” Strangely, how¬ 
ever, its author held that land would be a better basis of representa¬ 
tion than the number of freeholders. 

The large committee appointed to draft the Constitution in¬ 
cluded Henry, Lee, R. C. Nicholas, Madison, and Mason. Chairman 
Archibald Cary reported the Declaration of Rights on May 27, 
and it was unanimously adopted June 22, while the plan for the 
Constitution was submitted June 24. Over both, the struggle 
between the conservatives and progressives was spirited. In debate 
on the floor Patrick Henry naturally captained the democratic 
faction, while Pendleton and Nicholas led the conservatives. Henry 
distrusted the wealthy class in a double sense, as undemocratic and 
but tepidly Whiggish. To R. H. Lee he wrote on May 20 that 
all the powers of mind and body had now to be collected for one 
grand effort. “Moderation . . . hath nearly brought on us final 
ruin. And to see those, who have so fatally advised us, still guiding, 
or at least sharing, our public counsels, alarms me.” To John 
Adams he wrote that “my most esteemed republican form has many 
and powerful enemies,” that the Braxton pamphlet was an affront 
and disgrace to the country, and that it would be “my incessant 
study so to form our portrait of government that a kindred with 
New England may be discerned in it.” Adams replied: 51 

The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call 
them by what name you please, sigh, and groan, and fret, and sometimes stamp, and 
foam, and curse, but all in vain. The decree is gone forth, and cannot be recalled, 
that ’a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth, must be 

61 Adams’s “Works,” IX, 386-88; Cf. Tyler’s “Henry,” 178 ff. 


% 

i 4 6 THE AMERICAN STATES 

established in America. That exuberance of pride which has produced an insolent 
domination in a few, a very few, insolent and monopolizing families, will be brought 
down nearer to the confines of reason and moderation than they have been used to. 

When the Declaration of Rights was taken up by the Convention, 
the opposition of the conservative minority to its first clause 
disgusted Thomas Ludlow Lee. This clause, made immortal when 
touched by Jefferson’s pen, declared that “all men are by nature 
equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights . . . 
namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquir¬ 
ing and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness 
and safety.” To many literal-minded men the assertion seems 
absurd even now, and it might have been expected to meet vehement 
opposition among Virginia aristocrats who ruled over scores of slaves 
apiece. Lee wrote his relative, R. H. Lee: 52 

A certain set of aristocrats—for we have such monsters here—finding that their 
miserable system cannot be reared on such foundations, have to this time kept us at 
bay on the first line, which declares all men to be born free and independent. A num¬ 
ber of absurd or unmeaning alterations have been proposed. 

In the museum of the Virginia Historical Society at Richmond 
is fitly preserved the table on which George Mason wrote his draft 
of the Declaration of Rights, fourteen of the sixteen sections adopted 
being his. The document was a notable victory for true democracy. 
In the main, it was a restatement of English principles—the prin¬ 
ciples of Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the Commonwealth 
Parliament, and the Revolution of 1688. It of course laid down the 
necessary stipulations regarding jury trial, cruel and unusual punish¬ 
ments, search warrants, freedom of the press, and the subordination 
of military to civil power. It asserted that all authority is derived 
from the people, who, when a government becomes evil, have an 
inalienable right to reform it. It formulated the doctrine of the 
separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. It stated 
that all men who had sufficient evidence of permanent common 
interest with the community should enjoy the ballot. Another 
important section declared for a full grant of religious freedom; 
this was originated by Henry, and broadened by Madison, and the 
conservatives, seeing that' it would be the basis for an attack upon 
the Anglican Establishment, fought it tooth and nail. The first 
section of the document was also sure to be used in an attack upon 
entail. Indeed, the Declaration was a remarkable charter of 


62 Henry, “Henry,” I, 425. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 147 

liberties. It still stands at the head of Virginia’s fifth Constitution, 
and it was the model for all the many similar American documents. 53 

The Constitution proper, though less clearly advanced, was 
democratic in tendency. Its outline was reported from the drafting 
committee on June 24, was considered in committee of the whole 
for parts of three days, and after extensive changes, was unani¬ 
mously adopted June 29. Few records exist of the debates in the 
Convention, but there is no doubt that Mason dominated them. 
There is also no doubt that the original draft of the Constitution 
was his work. Madison and Edmund Randolph both speak of him 
as the author, while Jefferson is even more explicit in assigning it 
to him, adding that he was “one of our really great men, and of 
the first order of greatness.” It is probable that Mason laid a 
resume of his ideas before the drafting committee, and that it was 
used with little change as its report. This report was brief, and had 
to be expanded; its several articles were in recommendatory form— 
“Let the legislative, executive, and judicative departments be separate 
and distinct,” and so on—and had to be made declaratory. In 
addition, Mason’s plan was a little too well balanced to suit a 
period which distrusted all governmental agencies except the 
legislature. 

The important amendments made in the original draft were 
not, on the whole, improvements. The Convention refused to extend 
the suffrage quite as far as Mason wished, keeping the colonial 
property qualification. It made the Senate the direct choice of 
the people, whereas he had devised an indirect mode of electing it. 
It more carefully defined the powers of the executive, and in oppo¬ 
sition to Patrick Henry, who wished the Governor given the veto 
power, more sharply limited them. It excluded ministers of the 
gospel from the legislature. It confirmed the boundaries with the 
neighboring States, and asserted a claim to the Northwest. But 
the broad outlines remained Mason’s still. The instrument was 
greeted with satisfaction by all Whigs except the most bigotedly 
conservative, and though we can hardly believe that Jefferson and 
Madison were wholly pleased, R. H. Lee breathes general approval 
in his letters. 

Evident as were the faults of the Constitution, it marked a salu¬ 
tary advance for Virginia upon the road to that broad democracy 


63 Rowland’s Mason, I, ch. 7. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


148 

for which the names of Mason and Jefferson later stood in the South 
and Southwest. The right of suffrage was left unchanged; it was held 
by every freeman with fifty acres, and land was then dirt cheap. Both 
houses were to be chosen by the entire body of voters. Each county 
was annually to elect two members of the lower house, and Williams¬ 
burg and Norfolk one member each, while the Senate was to consist 
of twelve men chosen from as many specially formed districts, 
one-fourth going out annually by rotation. The Governor was to 
be elected annually by joint ballot of both houses, and he might 
hold office for three successive years, but should then not be reeligible 
for four years. There was to be an executive council of eight, which 
Jefferson later called a fifth wheel to the wagon, and Madison a 
grave of useful talents, but which was more, an unnecessary clog 
upon the Governor. At every point, it will be seen, the administra¬ 
tion could be held responsible to the voters who yearly sent up all 
the Delegates and part of the Senators to Williamsburg. 

One of the two gravest defects of the Constitution, a sin against 
sound government, was its grant of disproportionate powers to the 
legislature, and especially to the lower chamber. The latter alone 
could originate enactments, and though the Senate could defeat 
any bill, it could not amend appropriation measures. The two 
houses elected the principal State officers, including judges, and 
determined all salaries. The governor was pitifully weak, and could 
not even call the legislature without his council’s consent. The other 
chief fault was a sin against democracy, the unfair apportionment 
of representation in the lower house. Small counties like Warwick, 
with a few hundred voters, could choose two delegates just like the 
great western counties of several thousand voters. The westward 
drift of population accentuated this injustice, and it soon produced 
acute discontent. To this limited extent, the Constitution tended 
to perpetuate the old oligarchy of rich Tidewater planters. 54 

It is plain that these two faults in a limited degree nullified one 
another. Had the constitution-makers given every important power 
to the House, and then made the radical element of small farmers, 
professional men, artisans, and western pioneers dominant in the 
House, unwise legislation would have been much more frequent 
than it was. Virginia’s government might have resembled North 

64 Ambler, “Sectionalism in Virginia, 1776-1861,” ch. 1 and 2; McGregor, “The 
Disruption of Virginia,” 27-30. By 1810 the 49 counties of the east and south had 
less than one half the white population by 72,138 souls; but they had an easy ma¬ 
jority of the lower house. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 149 


Carolina’s. The partial dominance by the sober conservatives for 
several decades, without actually blocking progressive legislation, 
did block much unwise, precipitate action. On the other hand, 
had the Constitution-makers entrenched the Tidewater representa¬ 
tives in the House, given the Senate more power, and entrusted all 
appointments and an absolute veto to the Governor, progressive 
legislation would have been much harder to obtain than Jefferson 
and Madison found it. Better for Virginia had neither defect been 
present, but the two together were perhaps to be preferred to one 
alone. 

News of the adoption of the Virginia Constitution had barely 
reached Philadelphia when on July 8 the polling took place there 
for its own Convention. In Philadelphia the election, held at the 
State House, passed off quietly. “Fine starlight, pleasant-evening,” 
wrote one observer that night. “There were bonfires, ringing bells, 
with other great demonstrations of joy upon the unanimity and 
agreement of the Declaration.” 55 However, there was no unanimity 
or joy over the step which the State was just taking. The election 
laws had been in one sense so far liberalized that a very heavy vote 
should have been cast. The property qualification of fifty pounds 
or fifty acres, and the obnoxious naturalization requirements which 
had excluded many Germans, had been swept away; but so deep 
was the repugnance which many citizens felt for the destruction of 
the Charter, a destruction for which they had to declare their 
approval before they could vote, that in the entire State only 6000 
went to the polls. 56 The hundred delegates met just a week later, 
on a hot July 15, in a room just across the hall from the Continental 
Congress. 

The Convention, destined to produce the most peculiar of all 
the early Constitutions, had just one great name, that of Franklin, 
now nearly seventy, who was chosen its president. With him were 
associated David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, a mathematical genius 
whom the radicals liked all the more because he had been born a 
poor farm lad; James Smith, a lawyer of York and a signer of the 
Declaration; Thomas Smith, who had been a small officeholder in 
Bedford County; George Ross, an able lawyer and experienced 
legislator from Lancaster; and George Clymer, a Philadelphia 
merchant of wealth and brains. Special mention must be made 

B! “Diary of Christopher Marshall,” 83. 

06 Pa. Packet, Dec. 25, 1787, quoting Col. Hartley. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


IS© 

of two Convention leaders who stood apart, both extreme radicals 
—James Cannon, an ingenious Scotch professor of mathematics 
in the college in Philadelphia, and Timothy Matlack, a fiery 
Quaker of middle age, born in New Jersey, who was disowned by 
his sect for the fighting part he took in the Revolution. Most of the 
others were men of slender parts and education. Not one-sixth of 
his fellow-members, wrote Thomas Smith, had ever read a word 
upon constitutional topics. A powerful influence was exerted upon 
the Convention by one man not a member, George Bryan. One of 
the most active leaders of the radical party, Bryan was a Phila¬ 
delphian of Irish birth and blood, intensely earnest and idealistic, 
with an active but rather shallow mind, who was possessed of a 
keen instinct for public life which had made him an assemblyman 
and judge long before. Bryan was intimate with Cannon, and 
found a mouthpiece for his views in the latter. 

The procedure of the Pennsylvania Convention was simple. On 
July 18 a drafting committee, which included Matlack, Cannon, the 
two Smiths, Ross, and Rittenhouse, was appointed. Franklin could 
not serve, for much of his time was occupied by the Continental 
Congress. By September 5 the Convention had finished its pre¬ 
liminary discussion of the instrument, and ordered 400 copies dis¬ 
tributed for criticism by the public. After only ten days, however, 
it resumed debate, punctuating the discussion with other business, 
and on September 28 it unanimously approved the form of govern¬ 
ment. 57 

The minutes tell us this, but nothing more. Just who was writing 
the Constitution during these ten weeks? All the evidence points 
to Franklin, Bryan, Cannon, and Matlack as the foremost contribu¬ 
tors to this remarkable instrument. Alexander Graydon, author of 
one of the most interesting American autobiographies, says that it 
was understood to have been principally the work of Bryan, in con¬ 
junction with Cannon, but that Dr. Franklin was also implicated in 
its production. He attributes one of its peculiar features, the 
Council of Censors, to Cannon and Bryan, while an anonymous pam¬ 
phlet of eight years later traces this to the “fanatical schoolmaster,” 
Cannon, alone. John Adams was in Philadelphia during the summer, 
and intensely interested in the State Constitution, for the Pennsyl¬ 
vania radicals had been offended by his plan for a government com- 

87 Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790, 48-55 et 
passim. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 151 


prising three well-balanced branches. He tells us that not Franklin, 
but Matlack, Cannon, Thomas Paine, and Dr. Thomas Young, a 
physician of the city, were the authors. Adams of course condemned 
the Constitution. Again, it was men like Cannon and Matlack whom 
Thomas Smith must have meant when he wrote General St. Clair: 
“We might at least have prevented ourselves from being ridiculous 
in the eyes of the world were it not for a few enthusiastic members 
who are totally unacquainted with the principles of government. It 
is not only that their notions are original, but they would go to the 
devil for popularity, and in order to acquire it, they have embraced 
leveling principles, which you know is a fine method of succeeding.” 58 
The Constitution bears several of Franklin’s hallmarks. Three of 
his peculiar political ideas were the desirability of a plural executive, 
of a unicameral legislature, which Pennsylvanians had long main¬ 
tained, and of gratuitous public service, and we find the first two 
embodied in the new government. His little story to illustrate the 
defects of the bicameral system is well known. “Has not the famous 
political fable of the snake, with two heads and one body, some 
useful instruction contained in it?” he asked. “She was going to 
a brook to drink, and in her way was to pass through a hedge, a 
twig of which opposed her direct course; one head chose to go on 
the right side of the hedge, the other on the left; so that time was 
spent in the contest, and before the decision was completed, the poor 
snake died of thirst.” 59 Franklin had presented to Congress, a year 
previously, a plan for a union of the colonies, which called for one 
legislative house, and an executive council of twelve. Timothy 
Matlack wrote a friend some years later that when the debate on the 
form of the legislature was almost ended, Franklin was asked to 
speak and made a vigorous plea for a single house. 60 As for the 
Council of Censors, Graydon was no doubt right when he named 
Bryan and Cannon as its parents. To the former, who was an 
omnivorous reader, and knew so many recondite facts that a bet was 
once offered by a friend that he could name the town crier of Bergen- 
op-Zoom, the Roman flavor of the Council doubtless appealed as 


SKsStf&SffiSeISSS; 

Ma r rch 30, .779; Journals Con,. Cong., II, ,95 «■ ,, 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


152 

much as to the academic-minded Cannon. But Franklin also 
probably approved it. With the Constitution as a whole Franklin 
was so well pleased that he carried a copy to France, and exhibited 
it to Turgot, La Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, and other admirers. 

The first three sections of the Constitution proper—for there was 
also a bill of rights—contained the gist of the instrument. “The 
supreme legislative power shall be vested in a house of representa¬ 
tives . . .” they began; “the supreme executive power shall be 
vested in a President and Council;” and, “Courts of justice shall be 
established in the city of Philadelphia and in every county of this 
State.” 

There was to be no Governor, and no upper house! The members 
of the single legislative chamber were to be elected annually by the 
counties and metropolis, no property qualification being required of 
them or the voters. A blundering effort was made to supply the 
place of an upper house by requiring that every bill be printed for 
the consideration of the executive and people before it was brought 
up for final debate, and that only urgent temporary legislation should 
be passed by the same session of the legislature at which it was 
introduced. Naturally, to propose legislation at one session and 
enact it at the next was found so troublesome that in practice nearly 
all bills were treated as temporary, and at the ensuing session were 
declared permanent. The people every three years were to choose an 
Executive Council of thirteen, one from each county and the city 
of Philadelphia, However, its President and Vice-President were 
not to be popularly elected, but chosen annually from the Council 
by joint ballot of it and the Assembly. The President was little 
more than the presiding officer of the Council, and even its authority 
was closely restricted. That favorite demand of the radicals, rotation 
in office, was embodied in a rule that Assemblymen might not serve 
more than four terms, and councilors not more than one, in seven 
years. 

The crowning eccentricity of the Constitution, however, was the 
provision that for seven years no alteration was to be permitted, but 
that at the end of that time—in October, 1783,—and every seven 
years thereafter, a Council of Censors was to be elected by the free¬ 
men to examine the operation of the government and inquire 
whether the Constitution had been violated. If they thought it in 
need of amendment, they had the power to call a State Convention 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 153 

to sit within two years, for the purpose of passing upon a program 
of alterations suggested by the Censors. 

The instrument was received with a perfect storm of opposition. 
All loyalists and conservatives, all lovers of the old Charter, would 
have denounced it even had it been perfect, and its glaring faults 
made it an easy target. John Adams’s converts to the gospel of a 
well-balanced government were outraged by this quite unbalanced 
form. The provision for a single chamber of paramount powers 
struck many as dangerous, 61 and that for a many-headed executive 
as absurd. And who had ever heard of Censors? The Romans, to 
be sure, had possessed officers of that name, with duties of a varied 
nature, including the right of disqualifying men from public functions 
upon moral grounds, and of selecting the Senate. Montesquieu, in 
his “Spirit of the Laws,” had praised the Roman censorship and 
Spartan ephorate as a method of keeping government uncorrupted, 
while Rousseau in his “Social Contract” had spoken highly of the 
former. A pamphlet just published in Philadelphia had advised a 
decennial meeting of delegates to examine the State Constitution, 
and to see that it was kept pure and vigorous. But to many Penn¬ 
sylvanians the Council of Censors seemed eccentric, impracticable, 
and totally inadequate to keep such an unbalanced government in 
the straight path. 62 

Above all, the complete abandonment of the past by the Consti¬ 
tution-makers offended all conservatives, who felt that Thomas 
Smith had been right when he accused his colleagues of determining 
to reject everything in the Charter simply because it had been part 
of the old government. Observers from other States shared these 
views. Thus Hooper of North Carolina wrote home ridiculing the 
Constitution as a beast without a head, a motley mixture of limited 
monarchy and execrable democracy, in which the mob was made 
the second branch of the legislature, and taverns and dram-shops 
became the councils to which the State laws were to be referred. 63 

Even before the Constitution was finally adopted, savage attacks 
began appearing upon it in the press. One critic said that he saw no 
powers delegated to the executive, and yet it was surrounded by a 
hundred barriers; while he saw all possible powers given the legis- 

81 See typical denunciation in Pa. Packet, September 24, 1776* . _ , 

62 l H Meader, “The Council of Censors” discusses this institution in Pennsylvania 
and Vermont; see W. E. Heitland, “The Roman Republic,” passim, for the censors 
in ancient times. 

83 Jkmes, “Defence of the Rev. Hist, of N. C., 325. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


154 

lature, and not a single safeguard there from abuse. Had not all 
nations found compound legislatures the most favorable to liberty? 
The Rump Parliament, which sat nearly twenty years, “Scipio” 
warned his readers, was a unicameral legislature. After the adoption 
of the Constitution these attacks were redoubled. Finally, the 
excitement culminated in general mass-meetings held in the State 
House Yard on the nights of October 21 and 22. 

Ostensibly, these mass-meetings were held for debate. Colonel 
John Bayard presided, and a set of resolutions attacking the new 
Constitution was advocated by Dickinson, McKean, and others, 
and opposed by Cannon, Matlack, and Dr. Thomas Young. But 
the real design of the conservative leaders was to use the meetings to 
overthrow the Constitution. The elections for the new legislature 
were now near at hand. The leaders were already urging the voters 
to refuse to name any Councilors whatever, and to elect Assembly- 
men opposed to the Constitution; then, they said, the government 
would break down, the Assembly could resolve itself into a conven¬ 
tion to recast the Constitution, and it would be submitted to the 
people for final action. The resolutions skilfully outlined this pur¬ 
pose. The first half dozen hinted nothing of it, but simply consti¬ 
tuted a thorough assault upon the instrument. They were passed 
with a shout, for as one Anti-Constitutionalist wrote, “we had all 
the rich great men and the wise men, the lawyers and doctors on our 
side .” 64 Written by an expert pen, they lent themselves to a 
succinct indictment of the Constitution: 65 

1 st. It establishes only a single legislative body. 2dly. It renders the judicial 
[department] dependent on that single legislative body, who may remove any judge 
from his office without trial, for anything they please to call “misbehavior.” 3dly. It 
renders the executive dependent on that single legislative body; by whom alone the 
executive officers are to be paid for their services—and by whom, from the great 
disproportion between the members of the Assembly and Council, the President and 
Vice-President must always be annually chosen—besides that, every officer, executive 
or judicial, may be impeached by the Assembly, before six of the Council thus depend - 
ent on the Assembly, and be tried or condemned. 4thly. It erects no court of appeals, 
more necessary here than in some other States, as our Supreme Court may try causes 
in the first instance. 

But it was the final resolutions that really counted for the future. 
They declared that amendments were absolutely and immediately 

84 Pa- Gazette, November 13, 1776; Marshall’s “Diary,” 98, 99. One resolution was 
devoted to omissions in the Constitution; that is, its neglect to state which of the 
Colonial laws should remain in force, to fix the property qualification of the Assembly- 
men, to say what judges should sit in certain courts, and so on. Another complained 
that the constitution treated many subjects properly left to the legislature—the control 
of fishing and hunting, the status of insolvent debtors, and so on. 

66 This is a footnote published with the resolutions; Pa. Packet, October 2 3, 1776. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 155 

indispensable. They urged the voters at the approaching election 
to refuse the oath accepting the Constitution required by the Con¬ 
vention, and asked the Assemblymen not to take the oath to main¬ 
tain the instrument intact. No Councilors, it was advised, should 
be elected. The twenty-seventh resolution asserted that the As¬ 
sembly should consider itself empowered to make changes in the 
Constitution, and the twenty-ninth that it should submit such 
amendments to the people. The plan, in fine, was to prevent the 
creation of an effective government, and to force the new Assembly 
to remake the Constitution. 

For a time the Anti-Constitutionalists seemed likely by these 
aggressive tactics to carry the day. Their ticket in the city and 
county of Philadelphia, headed by John Dickinson, was elected by 
a vote of two to one over the radicals. Only Assemblymen were 
chosen there, for the Anti-Constitutionalists were insistent that the 
Council must not come into existence. Within a few days (No¬ 
vember 8) another mass-meeting adopted instructions to the Phila¬ 
delphia Assemblymen. It asked them to propose to the Assembly 
the amendment of the new fundamental law; to oppose, in this 
revision, any unnecessary changes from the government offered by 
the late Charter, confining themselves in the main to the simple ex¬ 
tinction of the royal and proprietary powers; and to take special care 
that the legislature be bicameral. Their final injunction is of import¬ 
ance as showing the growth of the constitutional idea that the people 
should be allowed to ratify or reject the organic law: 66 

... You are to remember that the consent of a majority of the poeple alone can 
render a frame of government, as well as laws, valid, and therefore you will propose 
that the frame of government be submitted to the consideration of the people a reason¬ 
able time, and after having collected their opinions in such a manner as shall be most 
expedient, you are to alter or confirm the same as shall be found necessary. 

As the news of the election came in from other counties it appeared 
that the vote had been remarkably light—only about 1500 votes all 
told; that not enough supporters of the Constitution had been elected 
to the Council to enable it to reorganize and sit; and that the 
Anti-Constitutionalists, though a minority, constituted more than 
one-third of the Assembly. They could prevent it from reaching a 
quorum, and thus possibly dictate their own terms to it. The 
Anti-Constitutionalist members, including Dickinson, Clymer, and 
Robert Morris, were jubilant. 

88 Pa. Packet, November 12, 1776. 


156 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


When the Assembly vainly tried to organize on November 28, 
Pennsylvania’s affairs were in dire confusion. There was no exec¬ 
utive; there was no Legislature, the minority resolutely preventing 
it from sitting; and half the State was bitterly opposed to the new 
regime. Dickinson’s ultimatum was soon prepared. He and the 
minority would agree, he said, to the choice of a speaker and the 
transaction of business, provided the majority would call a consti¬ 
tutional convention before the end of January, leave the existing 
Constitution in abeyance, and dissolve before the convention met. 
The majority leaders indignantly refused, and the deadlock dragged 
on, until in December the Assembly broke up, the majority agreeing 
to meet again a month later. Once more, when they convened, 
efforts to give the State a legislature utterly failed. 

But the dark aspect of national affairs now compelled Congress 
to intervene, and it intimated to Pennsylvanians that if they could 
not bring this stupid contest to an end, it would have to take over 
the government of the State. Thus admonished, the Anti-Constitu¬ 
tionalists, Dickinson and their other leaders being patriots through 
and through, began to give up their attempt to kill the Constitution. 
In February, 1777, elections were held for new Asssemblymen in 
place of several who had refused to act, and Philadelphia consented 
at last to name a Councilor. On March 4 the new government was 
finally set in motion by the organization of both Assembly and 
Council; they elected Wharton President, and George Bryan Vice- 
President, and next day these men were inaugurated. 67 

In these six months of turmoil and uncertainty Pennsylvania paid 
part of the cost of the reckless precipitancy with which the radicals 
had torn the government from the Provincial Assembly in May, 
1776, and framed it anew; part of the bill was still to pay. The 
deadlock which had paralyzed the State for several months at a 
time when Howe seemed about to fall upon it was ended, but the 
ill-feeling persisted. It was bound to increase, not to decrease. 
Party antagonisms in Pennsylvania from 1776 to 1787 were more 
consistently violent than in any other State, and more injurious to 
it and the nation. 


67 Pa. Gazette 
Biog., V, 426-35 



, 1784; Stille’s “Dickinson,” 2c 
88 ff. (Diary of James Allen). 


207-10; Pa. Mag. Hist, and 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 157 


III. Constitutions of a Conservative Character 

The two brilliant victories of the conservatives were won in 
Maryland and New York, which as Colonies had been governed by 
an aristocracy, and as States were to continue under aristocratic 
rule for another generation. Maryland’s Constitution was made 
especially interesting by its provision for the indirect election of the 
upper house. Here the electoral college, which Mason had suggested 
in Virginia, made its bow in American politics. It was well to have 
it tried in at least one State, though as adopted by the nation the 
use to which it has been put signally disappointed the intention of 
its originators. 

The convention, presided over by the head of one of Maryland’s 
most aristocratic families, Matthew Tilghman, began its work at 
Annapolis August 14, 1776, finished it September 17, adjourned for 
a fortnight after sending a dozen copies to each county for consid¬ 
eration, and finally adopted the Constitution on November 11. That 
is, at least a show of ascertaining public opinion upon the instrument 
was made. Of the actual course of debate and of the inside history 
of the convention’s procedure, we know almost nothing. Within a 
fortnight after the work began a disagreeable incident occurred— 
Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll, barrister, resigned as a conse¬ 
quence of receiving from their constituents in Ann Arundel County 
instructions to adhere to points which they believed incompatible 
with good government. A decade later Chase was praised for 
having defeated radical constitutional notions “similar to those 
which have divided and distracted a neighboring State,” which im¬ 
plies that the majority in Ann Arundel may have wished a unicameral 
legislature. 68 

The chief distinction of the Constitution lay, as we have said, in 
the careful differentiation in the choice of the two legislative branches. 
The House of Delegates was to consist of four members from each 
county, and two each from Annapolis and Baltimore, elected annually 
by freemen having £30 or 50 acres. Members of the Senate, how¬ 
ever, were to be chosen for five years, and by an indirect system then 
quite new. In September, 1781, and every fifth year thereafter, 
the voters were to name two persons for each county, and one each 
for the two cities, to be electors of the Senate. Three weeks later 

88 See Maryland Journal, November 8, 1785, on Chase’s part in the Convention. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


158 

this electoral college was to meet and select from its own ranks or 
from the people at large fifteen Senators, nine from the western and 
six from the eastern shore. To be eligible to the Senate, a man 
must have resided in Maryland three years, and must own £1000 
worth of property. The whole arrangement was most conservative, 
making it certain that the upper house would represent the wealth, 
position, and caution of the State; it was the antithesis of the 
system which the Pennsylvania radicals were adopting at the same 
time. Hamilton more than a decade later singled out this feature 
for praise in the Federalist, stating that “the Maryland Constitution 
is daily deriving, from the salutary operation of this part of it, a 
reputation in which it will probably not be rivaled by that of any 
State in the Union.” 60 The electoral college had its drawbacks, 
but the chief danger in most States after 1776 arose from the rash 
legislation demanded from vociferous, ill-educated voters, and against 
such demands Maryland was well protected. 

Another conservative, and in this instance really undemocratic 
characteristic of the Constitution was the high property qualification 
demanded for any civic participation. Each member of the House 
had to have property worth £500; each Senator twice as much; and 
the Governor real and personal property of no less than £5000 value, 
of which at least £1000 had to be in a freehold estate. The first 
governor was a very rich lawyer, able to equip and maintain at his 
own expense a considerable military force to join Washington in the 
retreat through the Jerseys. 

Nowhere was a Constitution adopted under more difficult circum¬ 
stances than in New York, and nowhere was one better written until 
Massachusetts performed the task in 1780. The Provincial Congress 
which acted as Constitutional Convention met first at White Plains; 
then, as the British advanced northward, it moved from Harlem 
successively to King’s Bridge, Philipse’s Manor, Fishkill, Pough¬ 
keepsie, and at last Kingston, well up the Hudson. It was a 
government on the run. 70 Immediately after meeting, and approving 
the Declaration of Independence, it resolved that the dangerous 
situation of the state demanded its undivided attention, and that 
consideration of a Constitution should wait until August 1. Jay 
at this moment felt the military prospect so hopeless that he was for 
ravaging Long Island, burning New York City, and retiring into the 

68 Federalist, No. 63. 

70 Lincoln, “Const. Hist, of N. Y.,” 491, 492. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 159 

Highlands. But on the appointed day, a committee of thirteen was 
chosen to draft the instrument. 71 

This committee was remarkable for the youth of most of its 
members, and the high proportion of names destined to fame. It 
is well established that John Jay, with some help from Gouvemeur 
Morris and Robert R. Livingston, produced the first draft of the 
Constitution. All three were young lawyers of prominent family. 
Jay, the eldest, was not quite thirty-two—a handsome man, with 
dark hair and classic features. His great abilities were partly con¬ 
cealed by his modest, self-effacing disposition, but he had made 
such a record at the bar that he was highly regarded. He belonged 
to a family of Huguenot merchants which had sent a scion to Amer¬ 
ica in 1686, and his ancestors had intermarried with aristocratic 
Knickerbockers, while he himself had recently taken as wife the 
daughter of William Livingston. As a member of the Continental 
Congress, he had distinguished himself by the papers he had drafted 
—letters to Canada, Ireland, and Jamaica, the famous circular letter 
to the Colonies, and the address to the people of Great Britain, 
which Jefferson called a production of the finest pen in America. 
He was conservative, thoughtful, scholarly, and inventive, the best 
man available for the place. Robert R. Livingston, of the Scotch 
family which held the great manor comprising most of what are now 
Dutchess and Columbia Counties, was thirty, had been at King’s 
College with Jay, and was for a short time his law-partner; in the 
first days of the Revolution Jay still remembered the very date in 
1765 when the two had “particularly professed” their friendship, and 
hoped that their “unbounded confidence” in each other might be 
perpetual. Livingston was soon to become the State’s first Chan¬ 
cellor, and to hold that position close upon a quarter-century. 
Gouverneur Morris, of English descent, had been born in the old 
manor house of Morrisania, and now only twenty-four, was just 
beginning to make his name as a lawyer. Of the other committee¬ 
men, William Duer, who had been an aide to Clive in India, was 
twenty-nine, and Robert Yates, John Broome, and John Sloss 
Hobart were each thirty-eight. 72 

Jay wrote Rutledge early in July that the drafting of the Con¬ 
stitution would take only a month or two. “We have a government, 

n CfTfe. 4 !. 0, 'Alexander, “Pol. Hist. N. Y. I, 5*9; J- H. Daugherty, “Const. Hist, of 
the State of N. Y.,” ch. 3. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


160 

you know, to form; and God only knows what it will resemble. Our 
politicians, like guests at a feast, are perplexed and undetermined 
which dish to prefer.” 73 He was inclined to believe that the move¬ 
ment for a Constitution was premature, and that it would be best to 
wait for a period of greater tranquility. 

As a matter of fact, it was to be weary months before he was free 
to think in a sustained way of constitutional affairs, for even after 
August i it proved impossible to begin work on the instrument. 
On that day Jay, Robert R. Livingston, and Robert Yates of the 
drafting committee were absent from the Convention as a secret 
deputation charged with obstructing the Hudson and otherwise 
annoying the British ships. The Convention tried to recall them, 
so that they could whip together a tentative framework before 
August 26, but their return was delayed. September slipped away, 
while the military situation grew steadily worse, and on October 14 
the Convention definitely shelved its constitutional work by resolving 
itself into a committee of safety. At that moment Washington, 
holding the hills between Kingsbridge and White Plains, was in a 
precarious position, and before the end of the next month his de¬ 
feated, dispirited troops had abandoned New York soil and were 
retreating through New Jersey. The Convention sat again early in 
December. But it was not until March 12, 1777, that the commit¬ 
tee’s draft of a Constitution was at last brought in, and, in the 
absence of Jay, was read by Duane in his place, delivered at the 
table, and thence again read. Debates upon it commenced the 
next day. 74 

Our chief authority for believing Jay the author of the greater part 
of the New York Constitution is his son, who had ample means of 
obtaining the facts from his father. Jay’s field service in obstructing 
the Hudson and fortifying West Point, and his work upon a com¬ 
mittee for defeating conspiracies against the patriot cause, occupied 
much of his time until the end of February, 1777. His son states 
that to design the new government, he retired the early spring of 

73 Jay, “Correspondence,” I, 68. 

74 Lincoln, “Const. Hist, of N. Y.,” 499. The Convention’s Journals do not show the 
nature of the debates or even give the votes with fulness. The original draft pro¬ 
vided for calling the upper house a Council, the colonial name, but the Convention 
changed it to Senate, which Jefferson had first suggested. It was originally proposed 
that the Assemblymen be chosen by districts, but the Convention preferred the colonial 
plan of election by counties. The first draft provided for voting at elections by ballot, 
instead of viva voce, a desirable reform. Gouverneur Morris defeated this plan, but 
Jay was able to obtain a clause providing that after the peace voting by ballot should 
be given a fair trial. The Convention also refused to allow all taxpayers to vote for 
Assemblymen, as was first suggested, and limited the ballot to propertied men. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 161 

1777 to some place in the country. “Upon reflecting on the character 
and feelings of the Convention he thought it prudent to omit in the 
draft several provisions that appeared to him improvements, and 
afterwards to propose them separately as amendments. ... It is 
probable that the Convention was ultra-democratic, for I have heard 
him observe that another turn of the winch would have cracked the 
cord 75 We know that Jay was well pleased with the finished work, 
rejoicing that it had met universal approval, even in New England, 
where few New York productions were liked. John Adams boasted 
in his old age that, according to Duane, Jay had left Congress to 
return to New York for the work of Constitution-making with 
Adams’s letter to Wythe in his pocket for a model. 76 Jay certainly 
would not have neglected to study Adams’s pamphlet, as well as other 
helpful treatises, but it is doubtless quite too much to say that he 
made it his model. 

With great merits, the Constitution as at last adopted united 
great defects, and defects unique among those of the early State 
Constitutions. At the time, and with reason, it was widely regarded 
as the best of the organic laws, and it exerted a considerable influ¬ 
ence upon the Federal Constitution. It was the first Constitution 
to provide for popular election of the Governor, and to grant him an 
approach to adequate powers, while it refused to hamper him with 
an executive council. It was the first which gave a fair balance to 
the three departments of government, executive, legislative, and 
judicial Its treatment of the judiciary, though not far-sighted, was 
better than that of most States. The Constitution was well-arranged, 
well-written, and brief, something which could be said of few. Its 
main faults, which it was impossible to perceive in advance, were 
connected with two remarkable innovations, the Council of Revision 

and the Council of Appointment. 

The Legislature was to consist of an Assembly and Senate, of 
which the Assemblymen were to have annual and the Senators 
quadrennial terms, one fourth of the latter body retiring each year. 
The Assembly consisted of seventy men elected from the counties 
in proportions constitutionally fixed, but subject to correction by 
septennial censuses; and the Senate of twenty-four members elected 
from four great State districts. In forming the Legislature, Jay 


Pellew, “John Jay,” 76. 
78 Adams’s r ‘Works, X, 4 


162 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

and his associates built upon the foundation afforded by the Provin¬ 
cial Legislature. 77 Voters for the Assembly had to be freeholders, 
and Gouverneur Morris, an aristocrat to his finger-tips, was respon¬ 
sible for a provision that the freehold must be worth at least £20; 
but Jay carried an amendment preserving the ballot to all the existing 
freemen of Albany and New York City. A voter for the Senate and 
the Governor had to own a freehold worth £100 clear. The Gover¬ 
nor was given a term of three years, in itself an unheard-of act of 
generosity, and powers similar to those of the Crown Governor. He 
commanded the armed forces, he could convene the legislature, and 
prorogue it for limited periods, and he had a limited power of pardon. 
He was to correspond with Congress and the other States, and to 
recommend legislation. The fear of his power was greatest with 
respect to appointments and the veto, and in trying to hedge it in 
at these points the Convention opened the way to gross future 
misgovernment. 

A few members wished the Governor to make all appointments; 
others, of the ultra-democratic stamp to which Jay referred in his 
talk with his son, wished to empower the legislature to make them. 
Jay probably approved the objection that the first method would 
give the Governor too much power, and undoubtedly believed that 
the second would too greatly strengthen the legislature. The original 
draft-Constitution proposed that the Governor should make a nomi¬ 
nation, that the legislature should approve or veto it, and that when 
the Governor had made four nominations to one place without suc¬ 
cess, then the legislature should proceed with its own choice. A 
protracted discussion arose. While the disagreement was at its 
height, Jay spent an evening at the lodgings of Morris and Robert 
R. Livingston, proposed a plan for a Council of Appointment, and 
arranged with them to bring it forward the following day. 78 This 
plan was that the legislature should yearly name four Senators, one 
from each district, as a Council to sit with the Governor for the 
appointment of officers; the Governor to have only a casting vote, 
and to preside. As an after-thought, Jay suggested that the Speaker 
be added, so that the casting vote would be less frequently needed, 
but this suggestion was overruled. 

It took many years to show just how extremely bungling this 


77 See Memorial Hist. N. Y., II, 610. 

78 Jay, “Correspondence,” I, 128. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 163 


star-chamber arrangement was. Jay had intended that the Governor 
should make the nominations, and that the Council should confirm 
or reject them, but this was not stated in the Constitution. In 
practice, whenever a majority of the Assembly was politically 
opposed to the Governor, it chose four Councillors who tied the 
latter’s hands, and made all appointments from among his political 
enemies. In order to do this, the Council was led to assert that the 
power to nominate was vested concurrently in the Governor and each 
of the four Senators, thus virtually stripping the Governor of all 
appointive power unless he happened to be of the same political 
party as at least two of its members. Every new Assembly election 
meant a new division of the spoils. The appointees were very 
numerous, the patronage enormously valuable in New York. The 
mistake here made, as to some extent ten years later in drafting the 
Federal Constitution, was in failing to foresee how powerfully the 
two-party system would shape all political institutions. 79 

The Council of Revision was similarly intended as a check upon 
both the legislature and the Governor, this time to solve the perplex¬ 
ing question of the veto. The Convention was afraid on the one 
hand that the Governor would interdict useful legislation, and on 
the other that a legislature might sometimes wish to pass rash bills. 
A Council was therefore created of the Governor, Chancellor, and 
three judges of the Supreme Court, or any two of the four acting 
with the Governor, to “revise all bills about to be passed into law 
by the legislature.” The exercise of the veto might be grounded 
upon either the unconstitutionally or the inexpediency of the bill. 
The suggestion for this section probably came from a memory of 
the King’s Privy Council, which had enjoyed a veto upon colonial 
legislation. But if the Council of Revision took no action upon a 
bill within ten days, or if each house could repass it by a two-thirds 
vote following a veto, it became law. The chief defect of this feature 
was that it gave a bulwark to the standing order and to conservatism, 
since the landed proprietors could often control the Council; while 
many thought that the body improperly united legislative and 
judicial powers. 80 

Still another unfortunate feature of the New York Constitution 


79 For Hamilton’s exposition of the early defects manifest in the New York system 
making appointments, see the Federalist, No. 77. The Council, he said, was a 
lall body, shut up in a private apartment, impenetrable to the public eye, and hence 

'^Pellew^s ^“Jay,” 8 if Daugherty’s “Const. Hist, of the State of N. Y.,” 86 ff. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


164 

lay in the close restriction of the suffrage, for conservatives like 
Morris, Livingston, and Yates never believed in a really popular 
government. As late as 1790 only 1303 of the 13,000 or 14,000 male 
residents of New York city possessed enough property to vote for 
Governor. 81 Any elector qualified to vote for an Assemblyman was 
eligible for that office, while the Senators and Governor had merely 
to be freeholders. Men could thus run for these two higher offices 
even if they could not vote for them. But the restriction of the elec¬ 
torate meant that none but men of large property were likely to be 
placed in any of the higher positions. In too large a degree the gov¬ 
ernment was made of, by, and for the landholders. “It was a favorite 
maxim with Mr. Jay,” writes his son, “that those who own the 
country ought to govern it.” 82 We shall see that it was the landed 
class, as opposed to the mercantile class, which for years did govern 
New York. 

The Constitution was finally approved April 20, 1777, by a vote 
of 32 to 1, less than one third the Convention then being in attend¬ 
ance. 83 Even Jay, after arriving about the middle of March, had 
been called away a month later by his mother’s death. As Georgia’s 
Constitution—an instrument which, like Pennsylvania’s, gave des¬ 
potic authority to a unicameral legislature—had been completed on 
February 5, New York had the honor of closing the whole original 
phase of constitution-making. This period had lasted sixteen months, 
beginning with New Hampshire’s rudimentary instalment and 
ending with New York’s comparatively finished and symmetrical 
design; and as a whole the patriots were well pleased with its fruits. 

IV. Defects of the Early Constitutions 

It is remarkable that of these first Constitutions, four lasted more 
than a half century: North Carolina’s seventy-five years, New 
Jersey’s sixty-eight, Maryland’s sixty-five, and Virginia’s fifty-four. 
The Charter of Connecticut served as a State Constitution for 
forty-two years, and that of Rhode Island for no less than sixty-four. 
New York’s Constitution, though mulled over by a convention in 
1801, endured substantially unaltered, its faults becoming ever more 
flagrant, for forty-five years. The others, including the temporary 

81 Alexander, “Pol. Hist, of N. Y.,” I, 15. 

82 William Jay’s “Jay,” I, 70. One good feature of the Constitution was its guar¬ 
antee of freedom of worship. 

83 Lincoln’s “Const. Hist, of N. Y.,” 556 ff. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 165 


instrument of Massachusetts, had comparatively brief careers, some 
being discarded almost immediately—and not one too soon. 

Four main sets of precautions were taken to assure the continu¬ 
ance of popular control over the State governments. In the first 
place, the Constitutions made it clear that the civil officers were 
instruments of the whole people: “Magistrates are their trustees and 
servants, and at all times amenable to them,” the Virginians put it. 
Again, tenure of office was held within close bounds, for almost 
all terms except those of judges were made exceedingly brief. 
There were few exceptions to the rule of annual election for Gov¬ 
ernors or legislators. In the third place, the Constitution-makers 
acted upon the Whig theory of political dynamics in providing for 
a theoretically careful balance of powers. As the planets are poised 
against each other, and between centripetal and centrifugal forces, 
so the colonists, following Locke and Montesquieu, sought to poise 
the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Virginia 
convention required that “the legislative and executive powers of 
the state shall be separate and distinct from the judiciary.” The 
Georgia Convention declared that “the legislative, executive, and 
judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither 
exercise the power properly belonging to the other.” The Massa¬ 
chusetts Convention of 1780 stated the same demand even more 
explicitly. The Federalist contains no stronger piece of exposition 
than that setting forth this theory of checks and balances. 84 

That the theory is in considerable part unworkable has been re¬ 
peatedly pointed out. A hostile poise between the departments is 
an outgrown ideal; partly because party government makes a close 
harmony between the executive and the legislative majority often 
as natural as it is desirable, and more largely because of a funda¬ 
mental reason which one American President has stated in cogent 
language: 85 


Government is not a dead thing, but a living thing. It falls, not under the 
heorv of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to 
)arwin not to Newton. It is modified by its environment necessitated by its 
as™ shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can 
ave its organs offset against each other as checks and live. On the contrary its 
ifl is dependent upon their quick cooperation, their ready response to the com- 
ife is dependent up ’ their am i ca ble community of purpose. Govern- 

"nt is not“fbSy Sf bSKSs; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated 
lent is not y modern day of specialization, but with a common task 

Xpurpose. d There can” be no successful government without leadership or 

8* See especially Madison’s essay, Federalist No. 47. 

85 Woodrow Wilson, Const. Govt, in the U. b., 50, 57. 


166 THE AMERICAN STATES 

without the intimate, almost instinctive coordination of the organs of life and 
action. This is not theory, but fact, and displays its force as fact, whatever theories 
may be thrown across its track. 

Yet the theory of checks and balances was, despite all the insist¬ 
ence upon it, by no means given true effect, for the first Constitutions 
provided no real equality of powers. As a fourth precaution to 
ensure popular control, the makers left the preponderance of author¬ 
ity to the legislature, which dominated the executive and shaped 
the judiciary. 

The subordination of the executive branch to the legislature grew 
out of the memory of hated British executives, and out of prece¬ 
dents set in the hurried work of retiring troublesome governors and 
giving their authority to servants of the people. The Americans of 
1776 thought that it was easy to keep the legislature a truly popular 
agency, but they knew no way of holding a powerful governor 
responsive to their will. They were unable to distinguish properly 
between a Crown governor and a popularly elected governor, and 
they had not learned the value of a concentration of responsibility. 
Each Constitution except New York’s made the Governor elective 
by the legislature. Maryland spoke for most of her sisters when 
she asserted that “a long continuance, in the first executive depart¬ 
ments of power or trust, is dangerous to liberty.” Hence in all the 
States the Governor or President was given a one-year term, save in 
New York and Delaware, where he had three years, and in South 
Carolina, where he had two. In most States a marked check upon 
the Governor was provided in the .shape of an executive council, 
varying in number from four to thirteen. In no State did the 
Governor have a final veto upon legislation, and in only three 
did he have a partial veto power. No State allowed him to adjourn 
the legislature, and the few which permitted prorogation, like New 
York, placed limitations upon the right. None of the States gave 
him any patronage for independent distribution. South Carolina, 
in a quaintly timid clause, specially forbade him to make war or 
peace or to enter into any treaties. In four States there was not 
even a Governor at all in the ordinary sense—Pennsylvania, Dela¬ 
ware, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, where the real executive 
was simply a council. The Charter-Constitutions of Rhode Island 
and Connecticut made the Governor elective by the people, but they 
also kept him quite secondary to the legislature. 

As for the judiciary, it was as lamentably dependent upon the 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 167 

assemblies as the executive branch. In Connecticut and Rhode 
Island the judges were chosen by the legislature, and held office for 
only one year. In Massachusetts also, under the revamped charter, 
the legislature elected the judiciary. The arrangement in New 
York seemed better, for all the jurists, from the Chancellor and 
Supreme Court justices to officers of the petty courts, were named 
by the Council of Appointment. But here again the legislature 
might exercise indirect control through its hold upon the Council. 
In Pennsylvania, the Executive Council and its President appointed 
the judges, and in Maryland they were given their commissions by 
the Governor with the consent of the Council. This was a great 
improvement upon a legislative election, but in the former State 
complaints soon arose that the legislators had failed to provide a 
fixed salary. In all other members of the Union the legislature 
elected the judges directly, though in Delaware the President sat 
with the General Assembly when it did so. It was usually easy for 
a legislature to effect the removal of any judge whom it disapproved. 
In Massachusetts (by the Constitution of 1780) and in Maryland, 
Delaware, and South Carolina, a judicial officer could be unseated 
by address of the two houses followed by formal action by the 
Governor. In Pennsylvania and Vermont the single house might 
remove judges without the assistance of the executive. In New 
Jersey the judges were removable by one branch of the legislature 
upon impeachment by the other. 

In all, it is not strange that Jefferson burst out in indignation at 
the Constitution of his own State because “all the powers of govern¬ 
ment legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative 
body!” He added, in his “Notes on Virginia,” that “the concen¬ 
trating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic 
government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be 
exercised by a plurality of hands, and not a single one One 
hundred and seventy-three despots [the number of the Virginia 
legislators] would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who 
doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. As little will it 
avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism 
was not the government we fought for, but one which should not 
only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of the 
government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies 
of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


168 

without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. 86 
We have noted that a critic made precisely the same objection to 
the Constitution drafted in Pennsylvania in 1776: “In the Assembly 
I find the most unbounded liberty, and yet no kind of barrier to 
prevent its degenerating into licentiousness.” 

It was partly in reference to this legislative domination that 
Madison declared in the Federalist that “the accumulation of all 
powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, 
whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-ap¬ 
pointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition 
of tyranny.” He went on to show, by reference to one State after 
another, that in not a single instance had the three departments 
been kept absolutely separate and distinct, and that in nearly all the 
legislature had obtained a marked ascendancy. Upon New Jersey’s 
Constitution he was particularly severe. In New York alone, he 
suggested, was the government fairly free from the reproach outlined 
by Jefferson. In the Empire State it was not a lack of balance that 
was to prove objectionable, but the fact that the agencies devised 
for the mutual checking of the three departments were not rational, 
but irrational. Madison wisely pointed out that even if the executive 
and judicial departments had initially been made about as strong 
as the legislative branch, the latter would be likely to gain at their 
expense. “Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive 
and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, 
mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments 
which it makes on the coordinate departments.” 87 

A fact which contributed greatly to the early supremacy of the 
legislatures was the general assumption during the years 1776-87 
that they were the sole judges of their own constitutional powers. 
Few Americans believed that any State court had the right to declare 
an enactment invalid on the ground that it violated the Constitution. 
New York, in creating her Council of Revision, implied that when¬ 
ever a legislative enactment was approved by the Council, it was 
thenceforth subject to no question. The Chancellor and two or more 
judges of the Supreme Court had places on the Council, and pos¬ 
sessing this opportunity to review legislation, were certainly not 
expected to have any other; it would have been fatuous to have 

8« “Writings,” Memorial Ed., II, 162, 163. 

87 Federalist, No. 48. 


THE WRITING OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 169 

given them a judicial review of acts passed over their disapproval. 
As for the two States which had Councils of Censors, Pennsylvania 
and Vermont, the provision for these bodies—“whose duty it shall 
be to inquire whether the Constitution has been preserved inviolate 
in every part”—seemed to vest in them the whole judicial function 
of interpreting the constitutionality of the laws. These two remark¬ 
able institutions had the same influence in both States: they delayed 
the recognition of a distinction between the Constitution and statutes, 
and the development of a judicial enforcement of that distinction. 
As early as June, 1777, the Pennsylvania Legislature was grossly 
transgressing the limits set up by the Constitution. The Pennsyl¬ 
vania, Delaware, and Georgia Constitutions were flagrantly violated 
in the very provisions which referred to the writing of fresh 
Constitutions. 

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 also showed that the 
State courts were in no instance expected to annul a statute, for it 
provided that in 1795 there should be a popular vote upon the 
calling of a Convention to remedy any transgressions of the funda¬ 
mental law—“to correct,” stated the Constitution, “those violations 
which by any means may be made therein.” Moreover, the legis¬ 
lative and executive branches were authorized, before the former 
acted upon any bill, to “require the opinions of the justices of the 
Supreme Judicial Court upon important questions of law and upon 
solemn occasions.” This demonstrates that the legislature’s action, 
after such an opinion was given, was to be considered final. But 
New Jersey surpassed all her sisters in offering her legislature carte 
blanche. The Constitution required each legislator to swear not to 
assent to any proceeding which annulled certain specified portions of 
it; so that by implication, the other portions were left quite open to 
violation! Delaware also marked certain parts of her Constitution 
as inviolable. 88 

As a matter of fact, the inevitable reaction against this legislative 
dominance became a strong motive for giving the courts that judicial 
review which is now such a universal feature of American govern¬ 
ment. “Experience in all the States,” said Madison in the Federal 
Convention, “has evinced a powerful tendency in the legislature to 
absorb all power into its vortex. This was the real source of danger 
to the American Constitutions; and suggested the necessity of giving 

88 cf. J. A. Jameson, “Const. Conventions,” 135-36. 


170 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


every defensive authority to the other departments that was con¬ 
sistent with republican principles.” Madison himself, however, 
thought it undesirable to make the judiciary paramount in the 
Federal Government, and wished to avoid this by establishing a 
Federal Council of Revision. The first partial assertion of the 
right of a State court to set aside a statute as unconstitutional 
occurred in New Jersey in 1780. The Legislature did not fully assent 
to it; nor were such assertions fully accepted in the two or three 
other States where they were made before 1787, though there was a 
steady and powerful development toward establishment of the right. 89 

Thus one great eighteenth century principle which the constitu¬ 
tions were supposed to vindicate, the principle of the balance of 
departments, they signally failed to apply. Another great principle, 
that of democratic equality, they equally violated by their property 
requirements for voting and office-holding. In order to enjoy the 
right of suffrage, a man in New York (with the urban exceptions 
already noted) had to have a freehold of £20 or one paying a rent 
of 40 shillings; in Maryland to have 50 acres or other property worth 
£30; in South Carolina 50 acres, a town lot, or property paying 
equivalent taxes; in Connecticut and Rhode Island property worth 
£40, or 40 shillings a year in rent; and in Virginia 25 acres settled, 
or 500 unsettled. In Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, and 
Georgia any taxpayer might vote, and in Vermont not even this 
much was required, but these States were exceptions. To be a 
member of the lower legislative house a very considerable property 
was usually demanded—£500 worth in New Jersey and Maryland, 
£250 worth in Georgia, 100 acres in North Carolina, and so on. 
The Constitutions were ill-arranged, and several showed a tendency 
to embody extensive codes of law as well as the bare framework of 
government. Nevertheless, as a whole they did credit to the political 
sagacity of the people, and most of them served their purpose well. 

89 For Justice Brearly’s decision in New Jersey, see Austin Scott, Amer. Hist. 
Review, IV, 456 ff. Jefferson took the view in his “Notes on Virginia” that State 
Constitutions might be changed by an act of the legislature, but St. George Tucker, 
in his “Commentaries on Blackstone” (I, Part I, Appendix, 83-95), combated this 
view; Howison’s “Virginia,” II, 138. James Iredell published in the summer of 1786 
ani argument for the right of the courts to decide the constitutionality of laws, and 
pronounce them null and void if unconstitutional; McKee’s “Iredell,” II, 145-49. A 
year later a decision in North Carolina was largely founded upon his argument; 
Martin’s Reports, I, 42. For action of the Rhode Island and New York courts 
whose tendency was to nullify a State law, see pp. 230, 270, of this volume. Much 
was said upon judicial review in the Federal Convention. For recent discussion see 
Charles Warren in the Nation, Vol. 118, p. 526 ff.; Beard’s “Supreme Court and the 
Constitution,” 1 ff. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


THE CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION! THEIR REVISION 

The years immediately following the drafting of the first Consti¬ 
tutions were a period of rapid experiment and change. By 1800 the 
sixteen States then composing the Union had adopted twenty-six 
Constitutions. The year 1793 found three, New Hampshire, Ver¬ 
mont, and South Carolina, under their third form of organic law, 
and four others, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Geor¬ 
gia, under their second. These rapid substitutions were necessary. 
Jefferson said, in explanation of the defects of Virginia’s Constitu¬ 
tion, that “the abuses of monarchy had so filled all the speeches of 
political men that we imagined everything republican that was not 
monarchical. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle 
that governments are republican only in proportion as they embody 
the will of the people and execute it.” 1 In general, it was found 
that the crude early Constitutions were most workable in those 
features in which they followed the colonial governments, and least 
practical when they departed widely from them. 

While it required a good many years to demonstrate the inutility 
or danger of such innovations as the Council of Censors in Penn¬ 
sylvania or the Council of Appointment in New York, the errors 
made in the application of old principles of government were soon 
evident. A series of wartime shocks taught the States that their 
legislatures were much too strong, their executive departments too 
weak. The principle of balance had suffered no more than that 
of democracy. The constitutional definition of the new electorate, 
it was found in many States, was too narrow. Complaints arose, 
again, that important liberal principles had been stated and then 
not applied at all. The bills of rights in particular laid down 
generalizations upon equality of representation, religious freedom, 
and the debarment of property from special privilege, which the 
Constitutions failed adequately to put into effect. A number of 

1 Thorpe, “Const. Hist, of the Amer. People,” II, 62. 

171 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


172 

rising young radicals showed an embarrassing tendency to accept 
them as truths to be carried out to the letter. Later on, the 
Western and Southwestern States used them with few reservations 
as a basis for their fundamental laws. When the Revolution ended, 
throughout the South the conflict between the uplands and lowlands 
was suddenly thrust into the foreground, while in the north new 
economic problems affected the outlook of the people upon their 
Constitutions. 

Fortunately, the rapid development of better State Constitutions 
was facilitated by the free interchange of constitutional ideas, and 
the popular willingness of most States to hold revising conventions. 
The obstacles to the calling of such bodies were decidedly fewer 
than today. Outside the South, the vested interests that might be 
injured by alterations were not so powerful as they became within 
a few decades. Men were accustomed to the idea of constitutional 
change, while most of the original instruments had been adopted 
informally, and formalities took root only slowly. When later the 
tide of constitutional revision ebbed, it was in part because a ten¬ 
dency had arisen to look upon the “fathers” with peculiar reverence 
—a tendency which Jefferson before his death deprecated. “They 
ascribe to men of the preceding age more wisdom than human, and 
suppose what they did to be beyond improvement,” Jefferson com¬ 
plained. “I know that age well. I belonged to it and worked with 
it. . . . It was very like the present, but without the experience of 
the present, and forty years experience in government is worth a 
century in book-reading.” But in the first three decades after 1776, 
constitutional evolution led the country toward a uniform type of 
State government, with future lines of progress clearly indicated. 

I. Revision in New England 

Three stages disclose themselves in this evolution as it was pre¬ 
sented before 1790. The first was the substitution of permanent 
for temporary constitutions in the three States which had adopted 
imperfect instruments before the Declaration of Independence— 
South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The second 
was the appearance of constitutional reform as a bitter political and 
sectional issue in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and 
Georgia. The third was produced by the impact of the Federal 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 173 

Constitution upon the people, giving them a clearer idea of consti¬ 
tutional perfection; it merged with the second, and in Pennsylvania 
and the two southernmost States it helped to effect an actual revision. 
The first stage would be intrinsically of the least importance were 
it not that it witnessed the development in New England of the 
modern process of Constitution-making. We have seen that not one 
of the original constitutions was made by a special convention, and 
that none was submitted to the people, though in Pennsylvania and 
Maryland an imperfect effort was made to obtain an inkling of 
public sentiment while the instrument was still unratified. By 
1780 a more finished method had appeared. 

We need not linger long over South Carolina’s adoption of a 
revised Constitution in 1778, a step necessitated by the fact that 
her original instrument was simply a stop-gap. Before three years 
had passed a majority of the legislature saw that it must be replaced. 
Sentiment was particularly aroused in favor of two reforms, the 
disestablishment of the Anglican Church, and the creation of a 
popularly-elected Senate in place of the Legislative Council. In the 
days preceding March 3, the legislature, under the leadership not 
only of radicals like Christopher Gadsden and W. H. Drayton but 
of such conservatives as Rawlins Lowndes, debated and passed a 
new Constitution. It was treated in all respects as if it were merely 
a complex legislative measure. On the date named, it was sent to 
President Rutledge, and five days later Rutledge vetoed it, giving 
his reasons in an able speech to the two houses. He had sworn to 
support the old Constitution, he said, and he did not believe that 
the people had delegated to the legislature the power of making a new 
one. From one passage in his address some inferred, doubtless mis¬ 
takenly, that he still thought it wrong to close the last door to a 
reunion with England. 

But the main reason for Rutledge’s veto was his thorough-going 
conservatism, which inspired his dislike for any marked innovation. 
The people, he said preferred the existing mode of electing the upper 
house, because men of higher integrity and ability would be chosen 
by and from their representatives, when assembled, than by a popular 
vote in the several localities. He ventured farther: “The people 
also preferred a compounded or mixed government to a simple 
democracy, or one verging toward it, perhaps because however un¬ 
exceptionable a democratic government may appear at first view, its 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


174 

effects have been found arbitrary, severe, and destructive”—a 
remark pointing at North Carolina. Then Rutledge resigned, to the 
relief of the legislature, which immediately repassed the Constitution 
and sent it to Rawlins Lowndes as the new President for his signa¬ 
ture. It went into effect that fall, and the people showed that 
honest John Rutledge was still their most popular leader by electing 
him the first Governor. 2 

The new Constitution was in some respects a measurable improve¬ 
ment over the first. The religious section guaranteed tolerance and 
equality to all Christian Protestant sects, though the Anglican 
Church was secured in all its property. It was wise also to arrange 
for direct popular election of the upper house, thus relieving it of 
dependence upon the lower. 

However, the instrument remained essentially aristocratic in 
character, and some of its most glaring defects were in no wise 
softened. The newer section of the State was still treated unjustly. 
The representatives were apportioned among the parishes and west¬ 
ern districts by the Constitution just as before—the lowlands electing 
144 members, the uplands 58; but in 1785 and every fourteen years 
thereafter, they were to be reapportioned according to the number 
of white inhabitants and the value of the taxable property. There 
was no assurance that this reapportionment, which would be carried 
out by the legislature, would be fair, and the history of the past was 
good reason for believing that the arbitrary discriminations against 
the west would be repeated. Moreover, the double basis of repre¬ 
sentation stipulated by the Constitution offered a broad ground for 
quarrel. Anyone could see that the lowlands would try to place the 
emphasis upon property, and the plateau country upon population, 
and that the lowlands would win. 

As for the Senate, most parishes were given the right to name one 
member. The Governor was still to be elected by the legislature for 
two years, still allowed only the slenderest appointive powers, and 
lost his veto—there was no improvement here. One important 
change, confirming the aristocratic nature of the government, lay in 
the high property qualifications required for any official participation. 

2 McCrady’s “S. C. in the Rev., 1775-80," 235 ff.; Van Santvoord, “Lives of the 
Chief Justices,” 121-22. For young Col. John Laurens’s indignation over the legis¬ 
lature’s action, as tending to the erection of an oligarchy or aristocracy, see “Army 
Correspondence of John Laurens,” 172-73; Wallace’s “Henry Laurens,” 476. Chris¬ 
topher Gadsden was the foremost leader in carrying the new Constitution through and 
if the State had been converted to radical political views it would have made him 
President; but it was not. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 175 

The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and privy councillors had to 
own plantations worth £10,000 or more in currency. A Senator had 
to own an estate in his parish or district worth £2000, or, if he were 
not resident in the parish he represented, to be worth £7000; a 
representative had to possess fifty acres, a town lot, or equivalent 
taxable property in his own parish, or if he sat for another parish, 
to possess an estate there worth £3500. These provisions, it will be 
seen, gave rich Charlestonians owning country estates a right to 
represent the communities in which these plantations lay. Every 
voter had to have fifty acres, a town lot, or their equivalent, and as 
he did not have to reside where he voted, plural suffrage was legal. 
It was distinctly a government for the rich, well-born lowlanders, 
who had made it for themselves, and meant to keep it their own. 

Fortunately, the constitutional labors of Massachusetts had a 
better direction and result. Here it was that two momentous ideas 
—that of the independent constitutional convention, and that of 
the submission of its handiwork to the people—were first insisted 
upon. The special convention was proposed by Concord on Octo¬ 
ber 21, 1776, with the cogent argument that the legislature was not 
at all a proper body to form a constitution, since the instrument it 
made would be alterable by later legislatures. Even earlier, the 
town of Norton had proposed a convention as an alternative to 
legislative action. The first demand for the submission of any 
constitution to popular vote came from the poor, hardy settlers of 
Berkshire County in the west. They feared that an aristocratic 
form of government would be imposed upon them by the commercial 
and professional groups of Boston, which they knew were conserva¬ 
tive and inclined to press special economic interests. Led by the 
fighting parson who later fired the first shot at the battle of Ben¬ 
nington, they held a mass-meeting at Pittsfield and sent a memorial 
to the General Court. They argued that the people were the foun¬ 
tain of all power, that the revolutionary legislature had no right to 
impose a Constitution upon them, and that it should devise a new 
government and then refer it to the State, for only majority-consent 
could give life and validity to it. 3 

The leaders of the State tried at first to grant but half this popular 
demand—to agree to a referendum on the Constitution, but to deny 
the people a special convention. There was no question when inde- 

s Mass Archives, CLVI, f. 182; Cushing, “Transition from Province to Common¬ 
wealth ” passim; ‘'Manual of the Mass. Convention of 1917-18, 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


176 

pendence was declared but that the old Charter made an unsatisfac¬ 
tory organic law, and would have to be replaced as soon as possible. 
As we have said, the council of twenty-eight constituted a slow, 
cumbersome executive. The legislature yielded to the temptation of 
appointing its own members to paid offices, until one Pooh-Bah 
from Falmouth, Maine, held six at once. In the west the Charter 
was so unpopular, and the awkwardness and cost of the judicial 
system were so great, that the Berkshire towns erected their own 
courts, almost openly defied the State authorities, and for some 
years were practically autonomous. If the General Court had tried 
to enforce its enactments, the dismemberment of Massachusetts 
might have resulted. Even in the east, the government was hardly 
in operation before the movement to supersede it began. 4 As early 
as September 17, 1776, the House therefore asked the town meetings 
to say whether they would consent to a conversion of the legislature 
into a constitutional convention, and whether they wished the new 
Constitution published for their inspection before it was ratified by 
the Assembly. 

Most of the towns which replied declared that the Constitution 
should not merely be published, but submitted to popular vote. The 
opposition to anything but a special constitutional convention inde¬ 
pendent of the legislature was so strong, moreover, that a House 
committee recommended (January 28, 1777) that the towns be 
asked to elect delegates to such a body. But the House, unfortu¬ 
nately, was determined to undertake the task itself. On May 5 it 
and the Council urged the voters, at the election that month, to 
choose representatives who would not only perform the ordinary 
legislative work, but would unite with the Council to draw up a 
Constitution for submission to the voters. 5 

This proposal aroused widespread indignation. The legislature 
promised that the new instrument would be sent to the town meet¬ 
ings, and duly established only when approved by two thirds of 
the adult freemen present, but this was not enough. A meeting of 
representatives of a number of towns had already been held in 
Worcester County, and had voted that only a special convention 
ought to undertake the task. Boston now voted that her representa¬ 
tives must take no part in a Constitutional Convention formed out 

4 “Manual of the Mass. Convention of 1917-18,” 13 ff. 

6 Mass. Archives, CLVI, f. 199. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 177 

of the General Court. Nevertheless, the program was carried out. 
The elections were held; the new House met, concluded that most 
of the people had acquiesced in the short-cut method of Constitution¬ 
making, and set to work. Some of the best men in Massachusetts 
thought this method the proper one. John Adams, for example, 
who had feared a year earlier that a spirit of “leveling as well as 
innovation” was afloat, now wrote to James Warren that it was a 
pity the legislature was obliged even to lay the Constitution before 
the towns; for it would divide and distract them. 6 

But the short-cut method ignominiously failed. The first draft 
of the Constitution was drawn up by a committee of twelve, in 
which Robert Treat Paine was the leading spirit, and James Warren, 
James Prescott, and Thomas Cushing were prominent. The work 
went forward slowly, and not until February 28, 1778, was the 
finished instrument approved. Yet it was so poor a Constitution 
that the chaplain of the House expressed the opinion that it had 
been drafted with the deliberate purpose of having it rejected, so 
that the Charter authorities might continue in power. It had no 
bill of rights, though this alone was enough to seal its fate. It 
provided for a legislature of two branches, but the Senate was to be 
indirectly elected, and was to be the Governor’s council as well 
as the upper house. All the acts of the Governor were to be 
dependent upon the advice and consent of the Senate, in which he 
had a voice. He was of course given no veto power. The weakness 
of the Governor and the contrasting strength of the legislature espe¬ 
cially alarmed the conservatives, who feared disorder and license. 
In short, the new form found friends neither among the radicals, 
who condemned the method of drafting it, nor the cautious. Boston 
was unyieldingly hostile. On March 4, the constitution was sub¬ 
mitted to the freemen, and defeated by the crushing vote of 9,972 
to 2,083/ 

The conservatives followed this election with a manifesto. Twen¬ 
ty-seven leading men of Essex County, led by Caleb Cushing and 
Theophilus Parsons, held a meeting the next month at Ipswich, and 
published a document stating the chief objections to the defeated 


e Boston Record Commissioners, XVIII, 284-86; see Adams s ‘Works, index under 
“Massachusetts,” for his writings regarding the Massachusetts Constitution; also 
Bradford, II, 188 ff.; Journal of the H. of Reps., 1 777 , *5 ff.; Monson, Mass. Hist. 

S ^Continentadjournal' October 8, 1778; Mass. Spy , Oct. 15, 1778; Barry, “Hist, of 
Mass.,” Ill, 175; Bradford, “Hist, of Mass.,” II, 158-50. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


178 

Constitution, and the principles on which they deemed a sound 
instrument should rest. Its author was Parsons, later chief-justice 
of Massachusetts, then a young man of twenty-eight. The Essex 
Result, as the paper was called, represented the conservative stand¬ 
point. Its twenty-eight articles demanded a bill of rights; a fuller 
independence for each of the three departments of government; 
exclusion of the Governor from the legislature; fairer apportionment 
of representation; and a better mode of electing the Senators. It 
went on to discuss, with much sense and clear logic, the characteris¬ 
tics of a truly sound, balanced government. Especially notable was 
its emphasis upon the necessity for safeguarding the rights of 
property. Parsons suggested that the lower house, to number not 
more than a hundred, should represent population alone, and that 
the upper, to number perhaps forty, should represent that part of 
the population possessing a certain amount of wealth. He wished 
both branches, and the Governor as well, chosen not directly but 
through county conventions. To the Governor he would give broad 
powers, including the right—with the consent of his council—to 
veto any bill. 8 

This pamphlet showed the existence in Massachusetts of the same 
cleavage between ultra-democratic and conservative parties that 
existed in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. The Essex 
Result evinced an exaggerated respect for wealth and leisure. It 
assumed that only “men of education and fortune,” with time for 
study, could exhibit high wisdom in legislation; it frankly declared 
that “the bulk of the people” could not possess an adequate knowl¬ 
edge of the interests of the State. The idea that a self-educated 
rail-splitter might rise to a position of supreme governmental power 
would have staggered its authors. But on the other hand, Samuel 
Adams, his homespun Boston supporters, and many voters in Berk¬ 
shire County and other remote districts, were too impatient of mere 
property rights; Parsons and Cushing merit high praise for their 
agitation in favor of a more complex, carefully balanced form of 
government. 

The defeat of the first proposed Constitution made the legislature 
docile. It took the sense of the town meetings again, 9 and in June, 

8 Parsons, “Memoir of T. Parsons,” 46 ff.; the text of the Essex Result is given, p. 
359 ff- 

8 Nearly one-third of the towns neglected to give an answer; but the vote was 6,6x2 
to 2,639 in favor of a new Constitution and a special Constitutional Convention. 
Adams’s Works,” IV, 215. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 179 


1779, directed that a special constitutional convention be elected, 
giving every adult freeman, resident in a town, the right to vote. 10 
Amid general satisfaction this convention opened on September 1 
in Cambridge at the old First Church Meeting House, whose site is 
now marked in Harvard Square by a tablet. Though nominally it 
had 293 members, in fact there were never more than about 250 in 
attendance. The period was the darkest in the Revolution, with 
Clinton victorious in the South, Washington inert on the Hudson, 
and the Massachusetts troops just defeated on the Penobscot. Yet 
its membership made it one of the two strongest conventions in 
Massachusetts history; John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, 
Theophilus Parsons, George Cabot, Robert Treat Paine, Samuel A. 
Otis, Increase Sumner, James Sullivan, Levi Lincoln, and Caleb 
Strong were all there. On the first day James Bowdoin was elected 
president, and three days later a committee of thirty was appointed 
to prepare a first draft of the Constitution. 

As a matter of fact, the task fell to John Adams. He wrote the 
bill of rights entire, save for the article on religious freedom; while 
he was the chief architect of the Constitution proper, the commit¬ 
tee and convention making only a few changes in the report which 
he drew up. For two reasons he was above all others the man for 
the task. He stood intermediate between the radicals and conserva¬ 
tives, between the Boston merchants and the Berkshire farmers, 
between James Bowdoin and fiery Samuel Adams; when he first 
entered the convention he made a powerful speech to smooth over 
their differences. In the second place, no man in America had given 
so much sound thought to constitutional problems. He was the 
foremost American champion of the bicameral legislature, a staunch 
believer in giving the State Governor nearly all the powers of the 
old colonial governor, and an advocate of an assured tenure for 
the judiciary—three principles which greatly needed emphasis in 


America. 11 

The convention, meeting in October after a recess, took up 
Adams’s drafts of the bill of rights and the constitution, and con¬ 
tinued to debate the former until another adjournment on November 
The next day Adams was on the deck of the Sensible , bound for 


12 


10 The Constitutional Convention was thus elected by a decidedly wider electorate 
than the State government itself. Morison, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings May, 1917- 
11It should be added that he believed in general education and wrote the section 
of the Constitution which enjoined the government to cherish literature and sconce 
encourage humanitarian societies, and countenance all virtues, including good humor. 


encourage 
See “Works, 


IV, 216. 


i8o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


France, and was sorely missed during the third and concluding 
session, from January 5 to March 2, 1780. On account of the in¬ 
tense cold and heavy snowstorms, for the winter was the bitterest 
since the great frost of 1717 of which Cotton Mather left such a 
vivid description, the real opening did not occur until January 27, 
and the number of members voting never exceeded 82. For a time 
there were hot disputes upon several points, notably over the article 
regarding religious freedom. The instrument having been agreed 
upon, there still remained the problem of submitting it to the people. 
It was determined that it should be printed and distributed to the 
towns; that it should there be discussed in the town meetings; that 
the townsmen should vote upon it clause by clause and state their 
objections to any article that did not obtain a majority; and finally, 
that the people should grant the adjourned convention authority to 
meet again, to tabulate the results of the voting, to ratify the 
Constitution if there were a two-thirds majority for each part, and 
if not, to alter the Constitution in accordance with the popular will, 
and ratify it as amended. 

In brief, the delegates made sure that their labor would not be 
lost, and yet that the popular will could not be openly defied. What 
a contrast this presents to the arbitrary action of the Pennsylvania 
constitution-makers in 1776! The ingenious plan was unsatisfactory 
in just one particular. How could a clause be amended if, for ex¬ 
ample, one fourth the voters approved it, another fourth disapproved 
it for one reason, still another fourth for a second reason, and the 
third fourth for no declared cause at all? 12 

Newspapers took little notice of the convention, few pamphlets 
were printed upon its work, and the public mind must have been 
greatly depressed by the war, yet a vigorous debate on the Constitu¬ 
tion occurred in most towns. The 16,500 voters of the State had 
fourteen weeks in which to discuss it. It has been said that this 
opportunity for debate was a safety valve for the discharge of 
democratic prejudices which otherwise would have destroyed the 
instrument, and there is no doubt that if it had been left to a yes- 
or-no decision, it would have failed ingloriously. But the citizens 
displayed much grasp and shrewdness. The convention’s request 
for a reasoned statement of objections evoked a criticism that was 
constructive as well as destructive, and that showed a remarkable 

“Morison, op. cit.; Manual of the Mass. Convention of 1917-18. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 181 


appreciation of the basic principles of government. It anticipated 
most of the amendments made before the Civil War. The criticism 
prepared by Joseph Hawley for Northampton, in twenty-three closely 
written quarto pages, has in our time been published as a distin¬ 
guished piece of political thinking. 13 He was an ardent democrat, 
and his objections to the property qualification for the ballot, the 
imperfect guarantee of religious freedom, the small size of the 
Senate, and other sections, were shared by many radicals. The 
Boston town meeting, after a day and a half of debate, recommended 
that on a third day the shops be closed. Most of the discussion 
throughout the State centered in the religious article, the separation 
of departmental powers, the reduction of the legislature’s import¬ 
ance, the qualifications for office, and the position of the judiciary. 

The final meeting of the convention began June 7, 1780, in Boston, 
and eight days later it formally accepted the Constitution. It was 
by now plain that a strong State government was an imperative 
necessity, since in political, financial, and military affairs the central 
authority needed much more power. Nothing but an energetic 
government could enforce the laws, collect taxes, and prosecute the 
war. “Never was a good Constitution more needed than at this 
juncture,” wrote Samuel Adams. 14 In some western communities the 
cry, “No Constitution, no law,” was being raised by rascals who 
wished to evade their due burdens, and even radical Pittsfield was so 
alarmed that it cast its whole vote for the unamended instrument. 
This critical aspect of affairs made the committee which scanned 
the votes a little careless of the details, a little eager to gloss over 
the objections. At least two articles, by a strictly fair count, would 
not have had a two-thirds vote, though they probably had more 
than half; but the committee reported all as having the necessary 
two-thirds majority, and the convention accepted the statement. 15 
One of the two was the article on religion, and the other was the 
provision that in 1795 a vote should be taken on the calling of a 
new Convention, for there was widespread sentiment in favor of 
making a revision compulsory. On June 15, 1 convention 
formally accepted the Constitution. 

The instrument thus adopted was admirable, and a great majority 


13 Smith College Studies in History, III, No. i. The procedure in most towns was 
to appoint a committee to draft amendments and to debate its report at a subsequent 

"SSSu*. “Life of Samuel Adams,” III, 103. ... , 

Morison, Ip. cit.; some town returns were hard to decipher and many were 

jhaotically arranged. 


i 82 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of its provisions have endured to our own day. It was excellent, 
first, in that it provided a true balance of powers, for it made the 
Governor, as Hancock and Bowdoin soon showed, as powerful an 
officer as in New York. He had a veto, 16 which could be overridden 
only by a two-thirds vote; he had wide appointive functions, naming 
—with the consent of his council—all judicial officers, the Attorney- 
General and Solicitor-General, sheriffs, coroners, and registers of 
probate. For the time being, he was commander-in-chief. Like 
New York’s Governor, he was chosen by the people, not the legisla¬ 
ture. Radicals and conservatives each found something to please 
them in the legislature. The former could rejoice over the perfect 
democracy and large size of the House, for every town had at least 
one representative; only the fact that till 1811 no State salary was 
paid these men kept the House manageable in size, for many poor 
western hamlets thought they could not afford to send members. 
The conservatives could take pleasure in the fact that the forty 
Senators were divided among thirteen districts in proportion to the 
State tax paid by each district, the body thus, as the Essex Result 
demanded, having a special relation to property. Judges were 
appointed by the executive, and held their places during good 
behavior. Thrifty Massachusetts insisted that each vote should 
have a freehold estate of £3 income a year, or any other estate 
worth £60; each representative a freehold worth £100 or other 
estate of £200; each Senator thrice as much; and the governor 
a freehold worth £iooo. 17 

Meanwhile, New Hampshire had been watching the course of her 
southern neighbor with interest. Here, too, the original constitution 
was quite unsatisfactory, principally because a many-headed execu¬ 
tive could not take the place of a real Governor; here, too, there 
sprang up an agitation for a special mechanism to ensure meeting 
the popular will; and here, too, there was a long delay before a 
Constitution was drawn in such form that the people would accept it. 

If it was difficult in the Bay State to write a constitution satis¬ 
factory alike to the rich Boston shipowner and the poor Berkshire 
farmer, it was equally hard in New Hampshire to please discordant 

16 Not exercised until after Governor Lincoln was inaugurated in 1825; Mass. Hist. 
Soc. Proceedings, XI, 64-66. 

17 These clauses, with the faulty article on religion, were the chief defects of the 
Constitution. Three Maine counties in 1785 asked for separation from Massachusetts, 
in part upon the ground that “A great part of the inhabitants of these counties are 
deprived of representation in the popular branch of the legislature, where all the 
money bills originate. . , .” Williamson’s “Maine,” II, 521-27. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 183 

elements of the population. The people in and about Portsmouth 
were very largely aristocratic, those of the Merrimac Valley were 
principally Massachusetts emigrants conservative in politics, though 
socially democratic, and those of the western towns were radicals. 
No fewer than three false starts were made. The legislature in the 
early spring of 1778 summoned a special Constitutional Convention, 
which met at Concord in June, the first such body in the United 
States or the world. It drew up a Constitution of a rather sorry 
kind, the chief defect of which was that it failed to provide an 
efficient executive, the legislature remaining all-powerful; and in 
their plebiscite the towns made short work of it. As the end of the 
war approached, the need for a better government became still more 
pressing, and a second convention sat in June, 1781. It laid before 
the towns a trial constitution which closely followed that just 
adopted in Massachusetts. There was to be a senate of twelve, a 
house of fifty, elected, as the Essex Result had suggested, by 
conventions of town delegates held in each county, and a governor 
vested with the veto power. Once more the proposed instrument 
met a decisive defeat, for it was quite too conservative to please the 
people. The opposition to the limited house was especially marked, 
for the towns wanted a larger body, elected directly by the voters, 
and felt that the choice by conventions would open a door to political 
manipulation. Not at all daunted, the convention met again, and 
made an effort in the latter half of 1782 to patch up its rejected 
handiwork. Hundreds of copies were once more scattered over the 
State, the towns debated it, and the convention reopened to find 
that for the third time it had been rejected. 18 

The situation was now becoming anxious, for it was generally 
understood that the original constitution was valid only until peace 
had been made with Great Britain. In June, 1783, a convention 
met for a fourth and final effort, and laid before the towns a form 
of government which they ratified that fall. It became effective in 
June, 1784, and that month the General Court met in Concord, 
where old Meshech Weare, the political Nestor of the State, was 
chosen President. 

18 In rejecting the second framework, many towns were actuated in part by dislike 
of the high property qualifications demanded for office, which were substantially 
identical with those asked in Massachusetts. Concord cast every vote against the 
third Constitution, demanding that the Legislature be granted many of the powers 
which the Constitution-makers had tried to give the Governor. See Manual of the 
N. H. Constitutional Convention of 1918, passim; Stackpole’s “New Hampshire,” II, 
ch. 8, 9. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


184 

The Constitution was frankly based upon that of Massachusetts, 
which had been read with admiration by New Hampshire men, 
most of whom held John Adams in high regard. Thanks to this 
fact, and to New Hampshire’s own ripe experience, the legislature 
was not allowed to dominate the government so completely as before. 
The President presided over the Senate, enjoyed the pardoning 
power, and could make a considerable list of appointments, though 
he did not have the limited veto allowed the Governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts. The General Court consisted of a very large house elected 
by the towns, and a very small senate, the seats of which were filled 
by districts. As in Massachusetts, all elections were annual; while 
also as in the Bay State, the judges were to sit during good behavior, 
but were removable, as in England, upon an address voted by both 
houses. In one respect it was an unusually democratic constitution 
for the time, since it gave the ballot to every man who paid a poll 
tax, and required a property qualification of no official save the 
Governor, who had to be worth only £500. The article upon 
religious freedom was only slightly better than that of Massachu¬ 
setts, for while it seemed fair to all faiths, it actually left it difficult 
for members of the smaller denominations to escape the payment of 
tithes to the Congregational Church. Upon the whole, however, it 
was a far better Constitution than the first one. 19 

The two New England States had now provided themselves with 
permanent Constitutions; more than that, they had been instru¬ 
mental in developing the standard method of constitutional revision 
in America. By calling special conventions to write their Constitu¬ 
tions, they had lifted them far above the level of statutory law, and 
given the courts a basis for that doctrine of judicial review which 
was soon to be formulated. 

II. Revision Elsewhere Before 1788 

From this exhibition of method and reason it is something of a 
shock to turn to Pennsylvania, whose constitutional history presents 
a record of such intense bitterness and party antagonism. The 
United States has witnessed many violent constitutional struggles, 
but none ever aroused a deeper rancor than that which agitated the 
once-placid Quaker commonwealth from 1776 to 1789. Radicals 
and doctrinaires, defending the new instrument, were pitted against 

19 Plumer’s “Life of Plumer,” 115 ff., deals with its faults. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 185 

the conservatives, who attacked it. The western counties supported 
the new government, which had given them their due in representa¬ 
tion; the old settled part of the State hated it. It was justly assailed 
for its inherent faults, unjustly assailed as a symbol of the revolu¬ 
tionized order. 

For the first seven years all the attacks launched against it were 
futile, and we may pass rapidly over their failure. Dickinson, in 
petulance and disgust, retired to his lands in Delaware, leaving the 
leadership of the conservatives to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Robert 
Morris, Mifflin, Thomson, and Clymer. These men did what they 
could against the “red republicans,” led by Bryan, Cannon, Matlack, 
and Dr. Young. For a time in 1777 the acrimony of the contest 
paralyzed the efforts the State was making in the war. Dr. Rush 
wrote General Wayne that the radicals “still hold back the strength 
of the State by urging the execution of their rascally government in 
preference to supporting measures for repelling the common enemy.” 
He regarded the new Constitution as intolerable, he explained, be¬ 
cause “it has substituted mob government for one of the happiest 
governments in the world. ... A single legislature is big with 
tyranny. I had rather live under the government of one man than 
of seventy-two.” Wayne replied that at the first view of the sickly 
Constitution he had decided that it was not worth defending; he 
was too good a patriot not to defend anything American, but his 
opinion was one that many Pennsylvanians acted upon literally. 20 
The weight of intelligent sentiment was clearly against the Consti¬ 
tution. Even the radical Joseph Reed found fault with the pro¬ 
vision forbidding any but a septennial revision, saying that the 
government might go to pieces before a necessary reform could be 
effected. 21 

But the “red republicans” were able politicians, adroit in rallying 
the public; they had the advantage of position, for they needed only 
to stand fast; and they were favored by fortune. Early in 1777 the 
pressure for revision became so exigent, and was so emphatically 
backed by the Board of War, which realized that the dispute was 
hampering the conduct of hostilities, that the legislature partially 
yielded. On June 17, at the recommendation of the Executive 
Council, it voted to ascertain the wishes of the people for a new 

20 C. J. Stille, “Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line,” 68, 69. 

21 Reed, “Reed,” I, 302 ff. 


i86 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Convention. 22 Luckily for Bryan and Cannon, Howe’s invasion 
prevented further action. After Howe evacuated the State, the 
subject was taken up again. The Legislature once more (November 
28, 1778) set a date for ascertaining the popular will; 23 and the 
Anti-Constitutionalists, forming a “Republican Society” to give 
vigor to their campaign, again felt confident of victory. But the 
Constitutionalists set to work with even more vigor and decidedly 
less scrupulousness. They organized a rival “Constitutional So¬ 
ciety,” with Charles Wilson Peale as president, and zealously circu¬ 
lated petitions against the proposed plebiscite. Office-holders under 
the Constitution procured signatures or even forged them, and some 
16,000 names, out of an electorate of 50,000 or 60,000, were obtained. 
The willing legislature was so impressed that it rescinded its call for 
the election a few weeks before the date set. An angry cry of 
betrayal went up from the Anti-Constitutionalists, but they were 
helpless. 24 

More petitions came from this discontented party, and their 
ablest writers bombarded the newspapers with criticism of the 
Constitution; but nothing could now be done until the first septennial 
meeting of the Council of Censors in 1783. The two sessions of this 
body afford one of the most interesting episodes in Pennsylvania 
history. Everyone knew that the Constitution was very faulty. 
How a majority of the Council, but not the two-thirds majority 
needed, fought for revising it and failed, is a story eloquent of the 
party passion which the issue aroused. 

Two Censors were duly chosen from each of the twelve counties 
and the city of Philadelphia. They met on November 13, 1783, 
and chose Frederick A. Muhlenberg, of the revisionist majority, 
president. Little was done till after the new year. 25 Then on 
January 2, after warm debate, it was resolved by a vote of 13 to 
10 that some articles of the Constitution “are materially defective, 
and absolutely require alteration and amendment,” 26 and a com¬ 
mittee of five, including Arthur St. Clair, was asked to draw up a 
report singling out these articles and recommending substitutes. 

22 Pa. Archives, Series II, vol. I, 53, 54; Series IV, vol. Ill, 655-56. 

23 The legislature even specified the subjects which would come before the Conven¬ 
tion: the creation of a bicameral legislature, the grant of wider appointive powers to 
the executive, a more secure tenure for judges, and the abolition of the Council of 
Censors. Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 p niff 

24 Cf. Pa. Packet, March 24, 25, 1779. 

2 ® A newspaper campaign for revision was in full swing; on the other side, see 
articles by “Constitutionalist” in the Freeman’s Journal, Dec. 24, 1783. and after 

28 Pa. Gazette, Jan. 7, Jan. 14, 1783. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 187 


Fifteen days later the Council received this report, which was taken 
up by paragraphs, debated, and with some changes adopted. On 
every paragraph the ayes were twelve, including the three ablest 
members, Muhlenberg, St. Clair, and Wayne, and the nays were 
nine. The adoption of the document occupied only one day, but 
it generated enough anger to excite the State for months. 27 

For what did the report ask? St. Clair’s committee demanded a 
single chief executive, instead of the Executive Council. It of 
course wanted a bicameral legislature, consisting of a house and 
a legislative council. As for the other two branches, it asked for 
decided improvements in the position of the judiciary, and it asserted 
that the Governor should be chosen by popular vote, should have 
larger powers of appointment, and should possess a limited veto. 
Representation, it recommended, should still be according to the 
number of male taxables, but the House should be limited to 100 
members, and the Council to half that many. Judges should be 
appointed by the Governor, should hold office during good behavior, 
and should have fixed salaries. Very sensibly, the committee recom¬ 
mended that the Council of Censors be abolished forthwith. All in 
all, it was an admirable report, and every step which it urged was 
salutary; Pennsylvanians had only to look at the better governments 
of Massachusetts or New York to perceive that. 

But the report, however wise, could not clear away the murky 
vapors of prejudice and malevolence which surrounded the issue. 
Whereas by section 47 of the Constitution a two-thirds vote of the 
Council was required to call a revising convention, the revisionists 
had only twelve of the twenty-one or twenty-two men usually 
present. An angry quarrel sprang up on the floor. Convinced of 
the justice of their position, and of the fact that a majority of 
intelligent Pennsylvanians were with them, the revisionists deemed 
it outrageous that they should be checkmated by the blind provision 
of an instrument which few respected. The minority stood stoutly 
for adherence to the strict letter of the organic law, stating that if 
section 47 were now violated, other dangerous innovations would 
follow. The advantage was clearly with them, for the majority knew 
that it could not legally issue a call. It was finally decided that the 


27 The minutes of the Council of Censors may be found in the Proceedings Relative 
d Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 179°; As other authorities, see S. B. Harding, 
Party Struggles Over the First Pennsylvania Constitution, in Annual Report Amer. 
Fill .894; L. H Meader “The Counc .1 of CenW; Reeds ‘Reed ; 

Itille’s “Dickinson”; and Konkle’s Life of Bryan, ch. 17. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


188 

Council should adjourn, with the understanding that the question 
of a convention should be referred back to the people, for an informal 
expression of a decision before the members met again. The body 
then broke up, to reconvene on June i. 

Throughout the spring the debate convulsed the State. The min¬ 
ority argued that the true task of the Censors was to reveal and 
rebuke the infractions of the Constitution, not to rewrite it; that it 
had proved a satisfactory instrument, and that it would be criminal 
to evade its prescription of the manner of amendment. They 
contended that the single executive would prove tyrannical, and that 
an upper house would be a privilege-seeking House of Lords. The 
conservatives, on the other hand, appealed to the public with careful 
arguments, filling the Gazette and Packet with their articles. The 
real question, they maintained, was the Constitution itself, so 
obviously faulty. It had been adopted at a time of party passion, 
when many able citizens were in military service, while others had 
assented to it only upon the understanding that it was to be 
amended at the first good opportunity. A majority of the Council 
now wished to change certain parts of it in a manifestly wise way. 
Yet after seven years of struggling, a minority which probably did 
not represent one third the voters, for the plan of representation in 
the Council gave a thinly settled frontier county equal weight with 
the most populous, tied the arms of the majority. The Council of 
Censors was itself an irrational institution, for its correction of 
infractions would always be too late, while sometimes its septennial 
meetings might produce a needless convulsion. 28 

Public feeling was deeply aroused, and the weight of numbers 
proved to be with the radicals. The resignation of one of Philadel¬ 
phia’s Censors brought on a direct test of the city’s sentiment, and a 
spirited contest resulted in the choice of the noted Constitutionalist 
leader, George Bryan. Another Censor died, and he also was suc¬ 
ceeded early in June by a man opposed to revision. It thus became 
evident before the middle of the year that the radicals would have 
at least fourteen votes, or a majority. At the same time petitions, 
circulated by the ruling political machine, poured in against a Con¬ 
vention, until in August some 18,000 signatures had been obtained. 29 

28 See papers in the Pa. Gazette, in February, March, and April for revision by “One 
of the Majority” and “A Citizen of Pennsylvania,” and in the Pa. Journal of June 
19, June 2 3, July 7, and July 10. 

29 Freeman’s Journal, Sept. 29, 1784. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 189 

All plans for a new Constitution perished forthwith. Frederick 
Muhlenberg declared that his side had been beaten by the “blind 
passion and party spirit of the common crowd,” which was true; 
but Joseph Reed spoke more to the point when, admitting defeat for 
the revisionists, he attributed it to the fact that they had attempted 
too much—if they had urged fewer changes, they might have called 
a Convention by a two-thirds vote. 

The final activities of the Council nevertheless remain of interest, 
for on August 16 it took up the long-delayed report of a committee 
on violations of the Constitution. Bryan’s Constitutionalists con¬ 
trolled this committee, and labored ingeniously to do two incom¬ 
patible things—first, to whitewash the Constitution, and second, to 
show that it had been outrageously violated by the Anti-Constitu¬ 
tionalists when they had held the government. The report stated 
that the frame of government appeared “clear in its principles, accu¬ 
rate in its form, consistent in its several parts, and worthy of the 
veneration of the good people of Pennsylvania.” But the chief test 
of a Constitution is its correctness of operation. The committee had 
to confess that it had found various and multiplied instances of 
departure from the instrument, and though it selected only such 
instances as were necessary to illustrate and reestablish the leading 
principles of the Constitution, they filled many pages. Everyone 
knew that it was ridiculous for it to try to explain this by implying 
that most of the violations resulted from the malignancy of the con¬ 
servatives. Its list of infractions laid emphasis on those occurring 
in and after 1781, when the Anti-Constitutionalists had attained 
power; this was manifestly unfair, for if the breaches made in the 
Constitution by its enemies were the more numerous, those by its 
friends were the largest. 30 

Overwhelming evidence was presented that the legislature had 
irresponsibly trenched upon the field of the executive and judiciary, 
and exceeded its already exorbitant powers. It had even broken 
three sections of the Bill of Rights. That for the protection of 
private property had been transgressed by acts authorizing its seizure, 
at a fixed price, for army use, and by absurd attempts to regulate 
the price of commodities. That for preserving men’s private pos¬ 
sessions from search and seizure had been transgressed by an act 

*« See letters in the Pa. Gazette, Sept, i and 8, 1784, demanding an explanation for 
the failure to criticize Bryan’s three-year administration. 


I 9 0 THE AMERICAN STATES 

for county levies and other tax laws. That guaranteeing jury trial 
in suits over property had been nullified by an act summarily set¬ 
tling one such civil suit. 

As for the Constitution proper, the legislature had riddled it with 
violations. Several representatives had been county treasurers, 
though the Constitution forbade them to hold any office except in 
the militia. The House, in legislation upon land cases, in dissolving 
marriages, and in vacating roads alleged to be useless, had infringed 
upon the functions of the judiciary. The Gazette at this time 
charged one Censor from Bucks with voting in the Council that the 
legislative stoppage of highways was unconstitutional, although 
“this old hypocrite addressed the House five months since for a law 
to vacate a road running through his plantation in Bucks County, 
and the House consented.” 31 The legislature had allowed some mem¬ 
bers to make reservations in taking the oath prescribed by the Con¬ 
stitution. It had usurped the appointment of revenue officers, 
county lieutenants, a collector of the port of Philadelphia, and other 
functionaries. Whereas the Constitution explicitly gave the Presi¬ 
dent and Executive Council the right to submit bills, the House in 
February, 1779, had declined to receive a proffered measure. It 
had pardoned criminals, including three Italian seamen convicted 
v of murdering their captain, although pardons were the sole preroga¬ 
tive of the Executive Council. It had made drafts upon the Treasury, 
another act which the Executive Council alone was authorized to 
perform. 

Of course, a multitude of violations of the section which demanded 
that all bills not introduced under stress of an emergency should be 
held over for vote by the following Assembly, and meanwhile be 
printed for public consideration, were alleged. An important section 
required that all State charges should be paid from the State treasury. 
Yet the House had seized Hall’s Stables, in Philadelphia, for the 
horses of its members, and had authorized the officers defending the 
( Delaware River to draw their moneys from the naval authorities 
collecting certain revenues, without letting the revenues pass into 
the State treasury. It had restrained a duly erected county, Fayette, 
from electing assemblymen, Censors, or a Councilor. The consti¬ 
tutional injunction that all judges should be granted fixed salaries 
had been disobeyed; while many acts—as one affecting those who 


81 Sept. 1, 1784. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 191 


harbored army deserters—had violated the provisions regarding 
jury trial. Although the Philadelphia newspapers had criticized 
nearly all the forms of constitutional infringement during the 
years 1776-83, they had been most severe upon the interferences 
with the judiciary. In 1781 a bill before the House to give the 
Chief Justice £800 for one year only was attacked as violating 
the requirement of fixed salaries. In 1781 the Freeman’s Journal 
censured a resolution of the Assembly, laid before the Executive 
Council, declaring that a court fine against a certain woman ought 
to be remitted, as an interference at one stroke with the executive 
and judiciary. 32 

In short, the Censors agreed that the Constitution had been 
treated with gross disrespect, and that the legislature—never the 
Executive Council or judges—had been the guilty agent. The 
committee report was an implicit admission that the government 
was dangerously lop-sided. Because it embodied much Constitu¬ 
tionalist propaganda, it was adopted by a vote of only 14 to 9, 
Wayne, Muhlenberg, St. Clair and six others explaining that while 
they approved part of it, other parts were foreign to the real 
object of the Censors. The final action of the Council was taken 
September 16, 1784, when it resolved, 16 to 10, that there was 
no necessity for calling a convention. Its sessions had cost Penn¬ 
sylvania nearly £20,000, and its main accomplishment was to fan 
higher than ever the flames of party and sectional feeling. 33 

This struggle of 1783-84 should not be regarded as a mere 
contest over the Constitution, for new factors of the greatest im¬ 
portance were tacitly involved. The Anti-Constitutionalists werd 
now identified with the party which supported the Bank of Penn¬ 
sylvania and the Bank of North America, both recently founded 
through the efforts of Robert Morris and the commercial com¬ 
munity of Philadelphia. The mercantile and propertied interests 
which disliked the State Constitution also felt a growing aversion 
for the weak Articles of Confederation, and wanted a more vigor¬ 
ous, responsible national government as well as State government. 
This fact was grasped by the radicals of Philadelphia and the 
western counties, who fiercely opposed the grant of a power of 
taxation to the Confederation, and who wanted no nationalization 


82 s ee the issues of June 6 and December 19, 1784. 

83 See the Pa. Gazette’s review, March n, 1789- 


192 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of the great open west. Battle was thus really being joined on 
a wide front—the fight for revision of the Constitution was but 
one episode. A number of purely State issues added fervor to the 
struggle, for the conservatives wanted the charter of the college 
in Philadelphia, recently revoked, given back again, and the civic 
persecution of the great mass of neutrals and conscientious objec¬ 
tors in the late war stopped. 

Simpler but hardly narrower implications stamped the struggle 
for constitutional reform in Virginia and South Carolina. Here 
the rivalry between uplands and lowlands offered the central issue. 
In both States the war had produced changes favorable to the 
western region. Many Tidewater communities were half ruined 
by the stoppage of exports and the trampling of the armies. The 
population of the long settled districts stood still, while immigra¬ 
tion into the up-country rapidly accelerated after 1781. Despite 
all the old bickerings, the Crown Government had acted as a pillar 
of support for the conservative lowlanders, and they keenly felt 
its removal. In Virginia new civil leaders, like Patrick Henry, 
Jefferson, and Madison, and new military leaders, like Daniel 
Morgan, came from outside the Tidewater. After Charleston was 
conquered and shackled by the British in South Carolina, the 
up-country rallied and waged a victorious warfare under such bold 
leaders as Sumter, Pickens, and Hampton. A demand arose from 
one end of the South to the other for the removal of the State 
capitals westward, for Williamsburg, New Bern, Charleston, and 
Savannah no longer suited the majority. Western Virginia and 
South Carolina were anti-federalist in their instincts, and the 
eastern sections federalist, but in both States there were central 
districts which held the balance of power. 

South Carolina’s second Constitution was not long satisfactory. 
Men justly complained that it displayed religious intolerance, since 
none but Protestants were guaranteed equal religious and civil priv¬ 
ileges; that a House of more than 200 members was unnecessarily 
large; and above all, that the west was unjustly treated. Imme¬ 
diately after peace came, a revision began to be discussed. In 
1784 Governor Guerard recommended measures to amend and 
perfect the Constitution. 34 The question was discussed by the 
legislature, and a bill for a convention passed the House only to 

84 S. C. Gazette, February 10, 1784. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 193 


meet defeat by a large majority in the Senate. The opposition 
came from the aristocratic lowland group in both chambers, and 
in the Senate it was accentuated by the fear that a constitutional 
convention might abolish the upper branch. 

But in the years following, the demand for a new Constitution 
sturdily persisted. During 1786 the low-country element was 
forced to consent to the temporary location of the capital at what 
is now Columbia, a central position. Charleston had ceased, while 
the British held it, to be all that counted in the State. After the 
evacuation, while it was recovering from its prostration, the plateau 
region made great gains in population. The site of Columbia in 
1786 was not marked by even a village, and it was said that the 
capital had spoiled the best cotton plantation in the State, but 
the legislature was able to meet there four years later. Its re¬ 
moval was an outward sign of many deep economic and social 
changes which justified the progressives of the up-country in calling 
for constitutional revision. 35 

Early in the same decade the demand for a revising convention 
in Virginia became equally marked. In his “Notes on Virginia” 
(1781-82), Jefferson wrote that time had already revealed capital 
defects in the Constitution. The majority of freemen in the State 
were unrepresented, for the roll of citizens entitled to vote—it was 
limited to men owning 500 acres unsettled or 50 acres settled with 
a house—did not generally include half the militiamen or taxpay¬ 
ers. Among those who did vote, the legislators were apportioned 
very unfairly. Thus Warwick County, with a hundred fighting 
men, had as large a voice in the legislature as Loudoun, which 
could muster 1750. In the Tidewater section, according to Jeffer¬ 
son, 19,000 fighting men elected 84 legislators; the whole re¬ 
mainder of the State, with 31,000 fighting men and an area ten 
times as great as that of the Tidewater, had but ninety legislators. 
What if the Tidewater did not possess a clear majority? This 
disadvantage it so generally overcame by its proximity to the capi¬ 
tal, and the consequent promptness with which its members could 
attend the sessions, that it governed the commonwealth. 36 

Again, various critics thought the Senate too nearly homogeneous 
with the House, for it was chosen by the same electors at the 


85 For this removal see Ravenel’s “Charleston,” 344 j S. C. Gazette, March 6. 
Schaper, “Sectionalism and Representation in S. C., 377 - 

88 Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia,” Ford’s one-volume ed., 157 »• 


1789; 


194 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


same time; and Jefferson adverted with implied approval to the 
example of States in which the House represented population, 
while the Senate in some degree represented wealth. A more valid 
criticism of the legislature was that its powers were excessive. 
Jefferson spoke none too strongly of the impropriety of its author¬ 
ity to alter the Constitution itself, and its right to determine its 
own quorum, declaring that the former particularly was one of 
the potentialities of a despotism. Edmund Randolph declared 
that the legislature had repeatedly violated the Constitution, till 
“everything has been drawn within the legislative vortex”; this 
was a rhetorical exaggeration characteristic of Randolph, but it 
had a germ of truth. 37 

At the close of the Revolution constitutional questions were 
thrust sharply forward in Virginia. In the spring of 1783 a cam¬ 
paign for a revising convention was organized under Jefferson’s 
leadership; it was a year in which a wave of reform seemed flood¬ 
ing the State, for a new attack was being made on the vestiges 
of the Anglican establishment, a law was passed encouraging the 
manumission of slaves, and petitions were circulated for the aboli¬ 
tion of slavery. Thomson Mason brought the subject before the 
legislature, but marked opposition was expressed to any hasty 
consideration of it; his brother, George Mason, thought it should 
be deferred for several years, till the excitement of the war had 
passed. 38 After the session ended, Jefferson went to the trouble 
of drafting a plan for constitutional revision, which was full of 
faults, but had the signal merit of apportioning members of the 
lower house among the counties according to the number of voters. 
Jefferson would have pressed the campaign at the spring meeting 
of the legislature in 1784, but was kept in Congress till the end 
of May, and then left immediately as an envoy to France. 

The task was entrusted to his chief lieutenant. While Jefferson 
was preparing to depart, Madison had a set of resolutions intro¬ 
duced in the House, and put his best energies behind their passage, 
dwelling in a long speech upon eleven salient defects of the Con¬ 
stitution. Some of them were important, such as the confusion 

37 H. B. Grigsby, “Hist, of the Va. Convention,” I, 122-23. Note that the grand 
jury of Richmond, Va , presented as a grievance in 1787 “the great number of repre¬ 
sentatives in the General Assembly; also the contracted powers of the judiciary de¬ 
partment, directed by the Constitution of the State, and earnestly recommend an altera¬ 
tion of the same on a model more easy and less expensive.” Pa. Packet, Feb. 2, 1787. 

88 Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 43, 66. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 195 


of the three departments of government, the dependence of the 
executive and judiciary upon the legislature, the inequitable appor¬ 
tionment of representation, and the denial of the ballot to large 
groups. Some were comparatively trivial, such as the bad footing 
on which impeachments were placed. He brought up the great 
question of the lack of any mode of interpreting the Constitution, 
and thus checking the legislators. Some of his opinions upon the 
Constitution differed. materially from Jefferson’s, and they were 
generally sounder. Nevertheless, the resolutions failed by a vote 
of 57 to 42. One all-sufficient reason was the unexpectedly vehe¬ 
ment opposition of Patrick Henry, and another was the fact that 
R. H. Lee, who was to have been a leading advocate, was 
taken ill. 39 

Georgia was still, save possibly for North Carolina, the most 
democratic State of the South. Her population was small, her 
problems simple, and despite the faults of the Constitution—its 
single house, its weak Governor, its dependent judiciary—the in¬ 
strument served fairly well. One minor complaint was that the 
legislature was too numerous. In 1784 the Chatham County 
Grand Jury was told by a circuit judge that an agitation had arisen 
over a supposed infirmity of the Constitution, and that if they 
wished to comment upon it, “it should be with great good temper.” 
With great good temper, the jury presented as a grievance the 
heavy expense occasioned by the excessive number of legislators. 40 
Every county of more than a hundred voters, and by 1789 there 
were eleven counties, had ten representatives, save Liberty, which 
had fourteen, yet the whole population in 1784 did not reach 
70,000. In 1784 the legislature tried to meet at Augusta. It was 
expected, however, said a newspaper, “that as soon as a house 
was formed, they would adjourn to Savannah, as there were not 
by any means sufficient accommodations for so numerous a 
body. ...” But the chief cause of discontent was the same as 
in Virginia and South Carolina, the unfair apportionment of rep¬ 
resentation. The first Constitution gave the five seacoast counties 
36 legislators, and this number was increased as two of the counties 
filled up; the two middle counties were given 20 legislators; and 


89 Rives’s “Madison,” I, 555-60. Few legislators were in favor of a convention 
possessing unrestricted powers; the majority would have been willing to authorize a 
body to alter the Constitution in certain specified ways, but neither Jefferson nor 
Madison wanted this. 

40 Pa. Journal, June 19, 1784. 


196 THE AMERICAN STATES 

the one upland county, io. Yet at the first census the total popu¬ 
lation of the uplands was 37,946, that of the middle district 25,336, 
and that of the lowlands 21,536. This injustice, accentuated by 
the fact that most of the numerous slaves were included in the 
lowland population, the upland farmers owning few, grew more 
and more irritating. 41 

III. Influence of the Federal Constitution 

Thus in four States—Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, 
and Georgia—the era of the Confederation witnessed a growing 
bitterness over the defects and injustices of the constitutional 
system. Left to itself, perhaps not one of the four would have 
attempted a revision. The lowlands were too well entrenched in 
the South, while the agitators for reform in Pennsylvania could 
be fobbed off with the statement that the Council of Censors 
would meet again in 1790. But the Philadelphia Convention of 
1787 and the State ratifying conventions of 1788 concentrated the 
thought of the nation upon constitutional questions; and when 
the “new roof” was actually raised, its symmetry and strength 
stood in striking contrast with the ill-shaped Constitutions of some 
States. The year 1788-89 saw revised conventions sitting in 
rapid succession in Georgia and Pennsylvania, while dele¬ 
gates to such a convention had just been elected in South Carolina. 
In Pennsylvania the Constitutionalists had rendered their position 
precarious by their insolent behavior after they had gained complete 
control of the Council of Censors in 1784 and had followed that 
feat by a smashing victory in the fall Assembly elections. Flushed 
with success, they had indulged in legislative follies, including an 
annulment of the charter of the Bank of North America, which 
had produced a strong revulsion against them. The adoption of 
the Federal Constitution was a second stunning blow to them, for 
they were the party of opposition. George Bryan, one of the chief 
authors of the Constitution of 1776, toured the State in 1787 to 
arouse sentiment against the Federal instrument. William Findley, 
another of the Constitution-makers of 1776 and an anti-revisionist 
member of the Council of Censors, was one of Bryan’s chief lieu¬ 
tenants. The southeastern part of the State was federalist, while 
the rural districts and newer counties were principally anti-federal- 

11 Cf. U. B. Phillips, “Georgia and State Rights,” 88, 89. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 197 


ist. The decision was not long in doubt, and ratification was 
effected as early as December, 1787, by the decisive vote of 
46 to 23. 

By the middle of 1788, Pennsylvania knew that the Constitution 
had been ratified by ten States. The demand for a State govern¬ 
ment in harmony with it, and of greater intrinsic merits, now 
became irresistible. The ridiculous features of the Bryan-Matlack 
instrument, men said, had long enough rendered the great centre 
of the Union ridiculous. The administration was steadily growing 
more unwieldy and costly. Every county elected two members 
of the quaint executive, so that there were already 18, there would 
soon be 22, and in a few decades there might be 50 or 60. To pay 
each Councilor fifteen shillings a day, with £1500 for a President, 
was ruinous—the whole expense when two new counties came in 
would be $24,000 a year. Under the pernicious requirement as to 
rotation in office, many valuable members of the Assembly that 
very year would automatically be debarred from giving Pennsyl¬ 
vania the continued benefit of their experience. Did anyone still 
believe in a unicameral legislature? It was idle to say that Penn¬ 
sylvania must wait for the Council of Censors, for the seven least 
populous counties could block any action by that body, although 
they had only 13,000 electors, and the rest of the State 56,000. 
Moreover, sections of the Constitution of 1776 and the Declaration 
of Independence showed that the people had an inherent right to 
alter a bad government when and how they pleased. 42 

Pennsylvania’s second Constitutional Convention—called by the 
legislature on March 24 by a vote of 41 to 17—formed a quorum 
November 25, 1789, and proved a body of high ability. Among the 
members from Philadelphia were James Wilson, William Lewis, and 
Thomas McKean; James Ross sat for Washington; William Findley 
for Westmoreland; and two men destined to achieve a national 
reputation, Albert Gallatin and Timothy Pickering, for Fayette and 
Luzerne. Gallatin, who had tried to organize an opposition in the 
western section, wrote in old age that it was one of the ablest bodies 
with which he had ever been acquainted. “Indeed, could I except 
two names, Madison and Marshall, I would say that it embraced as 
much knowledge and talent as any Congress from 1795 to 1812. 


42 Pa Gazette Tune 20, 1787, quoting Dr. Price; March 11, April 1, 1879, ° n 
defects’of the Constitution; January 14, 1789, on costs of government. The text of a 
widely circulated petition in favor of a Constitutional Convention is in the Pa. 
Gazette, March 11, 1789. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


198 

But the distinguishing feature of the Convention was that, owing 
perhaps to more favorable times, it was less affected by party feelings 
than any other public body I have known. The points of difference 
were almost exclusively on general and abstract propositions; there 
was less prejudice and more sincerity in the discussions than usual, 
and throughout a desire to conciliate opposite opinions by mutual 
concessions.” 43 Thomas Mifflin was elected president. The first 
act of the delegates was to lay down a general programme, upon 
which they showed a remarkable unanimity. They voted 56 to 5 for 
a legislature of two branches, 64 to o for a one-man executive, 56 to 8 
for granting the judges a securer tenure, 60 to 4 for giving the gov¬ 
ernor a limited veto, and 64 to o for amending the bill of rights. 
A committee of nine, of which the best-known members were James 
Wilson, William Lewis, James Ross, and Findley, was then appointed 
to draft the new Constitution. 

The mandate thus given the drafting committee was one which 
Franklin, on the edge of the grave, raised his voice to oppose. In 
reply to the revisionists, he wrote an essay in which he staunchly 
defended the plural executive and single-chambered legislature, while 
he also objected warmly to the proposal to elect the lower house 
on the basis of population and the upper house on a basis of wealth. 
Such a plan he regarded as the omen of a tendency among some 
Pennsylvanians “to commence an aristocracy, by giving the rich a 
predominancy in government.” He hoped that the State would not 
rush into these innovations, but remember the Prophet’s words: 
“Stand in the old ways, view the ancient paths, consider them well, 
and be not among those that are given to change.” Justice Bryan, 
whose days were also numbered, was expressing the same view. 44 

The debates in the convention were long-continued, but they were 
dominated by a few members. The principal directing mind on the 
majority side was that of James Wilson, a man whose commanding 
achievements in national history have been inadequately recognized. 
Bom in Scotland and given a university education there, Wilson came 
to America when the Stamp Act agitation was at its height, became 
a teacher in the college in Philadelphia, and studied law with Dickin¬ 
son. He practiced for a time at Carlisle, but his brilliant talents 
before long made him one of the leaders of the conservative faction 

43 Adams’s “Gallatin,” 79-83. Graydon’s “Memoirs,” 317-30, gives an invaluable 
account of the Convention of 1790. 

44 Franklin’s “Works,” Bigelow Edition, X, 184 ff.; Konkle’s “Bryan.” 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 199 


in Philadelphia, and he was as much trusted by the national bank 
group after Yorktown as Morris. He it was who in 1783 wrote the 
resolution of Congress asking the States for the power of the purse, 
which was a foundation stone of the movement for a Federal Con¬ 
vention. He was one of the most active members of that Convention, 
and labored tirelessly to induce Pennsylvania to ratify its work. 
Now he was acknowledged the best-trained debater and most power¬ 
ful orator of the State Convention, more than a match for Lewis, 
who had only a country-school education. Gallatin, as he himself 
confessed, took a minor role in the proceedings, and so did Mifflin. 
Pickering was energetic, and is to be credited with the provision made 
for education. 

Agreement upon the main features of the revision being secured 
in advance, the two issues most mooted were not of great intrinsic 
importance. One was the mode of electing senators, the other the 
freedom of the press. The drafting committee wanted the Senate 
chosen through an electoral college, and Lewis supported this pro¬ 
posal; but Wilson took the other side, and carried the day. As for 
the press, the issue was whether the truth should be received in 
libel suits as a justification for damaging utterances. The Conven¬ 
tion’s decision marked an important advance in the power of the 
press. It was asserted in the new declaration of rights that any citi¬ 
zen might speak, write, and print on any subject, being responsible 
for abuse of the privilege. In suits regarding the publication of 
matter on the conduct of public officials, or where the statements 
about private persons were proper for public information, the truth 
might be given in evidence; and in all indictments for libel the jury 
should determine the law and the facts as in other cases. The central 
principle of this section was in time accepted in both the United 
States and England, though in neither country till later. 45 

The new Constitution—finally voted September 2, 1790—re¬ 
flected everywhere the influence of the Federal Constitution. The 
two greatest improvements, of course, were the bicameral legislature 
and the creation of a single Governor vested with adequate powers. 
Members of the House were to be elected annually, and apportioned 
among the counties by population in such manner that they should 
never be fewer than sixty or more than one hundred; members of 


«Douglas Campbell, “Origin of American Institutions,” Proceedings Amer. . His. 
Association, 1891. Fox’s Libel Act of 17.92.1n England authorized the jury to give a 
general verdict on the whole matter put in issue. 


200 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the Senate were to be chosen triennially from districts. As for the. 
Governor, he was now to be chosen for three years by the people, not 
for one year by the Legislature. The old scheme of rotation was 
wisely dispensed with, a mere vestige of it surviving in the provision 
that no man could be Governor for more than nine years in twelve. 
The Governor had the same veto power as the President of the 
nation, and wide powers of appointment; he could pardon all 
offenders save impeached officials, and could convene the legislature 
in extra session. In short, his authority equaled that given the 
Governor of Massachusetts, and exceeded that vested in New York’s 
Governor. No more notable reaction from a headless form of 
government occurred anywhere in the United States. 46 

While just and progressive principles of government were thus 
winning a complete victory in Pennsylvania, in the two southernmost 
States they were being thrown back in partial defeat. Revising 
conventions in both South Carolina and Georgia completed their 
work during the years 1789-90. Georgia very willingly, and South 
Carolina after a contest between lowland federalists and upland 
anti-federalists, had ratified the Federal Constitution in January and 
May of 1788 respectively, and they at once found the demand for 
better State frameworks becoming irresistible. Georgia’s convention 
met at Augusta on November 4, 1788, and South Carolina’s at 
Columbia in May, 1790. In each State the structure of the Consti¬ 
tution was improved, and liberalism won certain advantages; but 
the central issue was whether the populous uplands should be granted 
an equitable representation in the legislatures, and both States 
decided it in the negative. 

When the South Carolina legislature issued a call for a conven¬ 
tion, it debated acrimoniously the proper apportionment of dele¬ 
gates. The uplands argued that whenever a people undertook the 
drafting of a new organic law, they reverted to the first principles 
of society, according to which, as expounded by Locke and Rousseau, 
all men are equal; so that the delegates should be apportioned 
according to the white population. But the lowland legislators, 
arguing that property as well as population should be represented, 
had a heavy majority and of course triumphed. When the conven- 


the spring of 1790 the convention took a recess of about five months to give 
the State time for consideration of the instrument. When it resumed its sessions, 
only one member voted nay. Gallatin tells us that the Constitution was everywhere 
j C ,_ act : was ever more universally approved”; and the first Governor, 
Mifflin, testified that it had diffused confidence and concord. Papers of the Governors 
01 Pa., IV, 192 ff. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 201 

tion met it contained the same number of members as did the legis¬ 
lature—239—apportioned in the same way. Of the 209 who actually 
attended, 104 usually voted on the upland side, and 105 on the low¬ 
land side. Of the 30 absentees, 22 were low-country men, so that 
had the situation demanded it, the lowlands could have mustered a 
majority of a full score; while its actual advantage was greater than 
the working majority indicates, for its representatives had more 
unity, tenacity, and education. Upon several reforms in which the 
Federal Constitution and the newer State Constitutions had pointed 
the way, there was general agreement. But apart from this, the 
session was simply a bitter conflict between the two great sections, 
one democratic, one aristocratic. 47 

Upon the most vital issue, the distribution of representation, the 
lowlands would not budge. With desperation it fought both a 
proposal to base the representation upon population, and a suggestion 
that it be based upon population and property combined in fair pro¬ 
portions. It knew that the uplands, spacious, fertile, and healthful, 
their population fast increasing, would shortly gain control of the 
State under even the second plan. By sheer doggedness it held its 
own and kept control of both houses. According to the final arrange¬ 
ment, the House membership was reduced from 208 to 124. In 
general, the representation of each district and parish was halved, 
Charleston receiving eighteen members instead of thirty, and most 
parishes three instead of six. The uplands were allotted thirteen 
more than half of the former representation, and the lowlands, where 
some new local divisions were created, seven more. That is, the low 
country was left in control of the House by 70 votes to 54 . The 
membership of the Senate was increased from 31 to 37, of which 
number the lowlands were given 20, and the uplands 17. At this 
time, we must remember, while the white population of the low 
country was only 28,644, and its negro population 79,216, the white 
population of the upper country was no less than 111,534, and its 
negro population 29,679. In other words, a dominant position in 
the government was retained by a little more than one-fifth the 
whole white population. 

The lowlands received a further advantage in that the qualifica¬ 
tions of members of the legislature were kept excessively high. Each 
Senator had to be at least thirty, to have been for five years a 

« Schaper, “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina,” 369 ff-i an indis¬ 
pensable monograph. 


202 THE AMERICAN STATES 

citizen and resident of the State, and to own a freehold estate worth 
£300; if he did not reside in the parish he represented, he had to 
own an estate of £1000 there. All representatives had to own free¬ 
holds of 500 acres each, with ten slaves, or real estate worth at 
least £150; and if non-residents of the parish or election district 
for which they sat, freeholds worth at least £500. Absentee repre¬ 
sentation of a community by wealthy Charlestonians thus remained 
possible. The Governor was required to have a settled estate worth 
£1500. 

Some concessions the poor farmers of the uplands nevertheless 
won, the most substantial of which was the removal of the capital, 
as a permanent measure, to Columbia. A frank delegate stated that 
the question was whether the legislators should meet ‘ amongst the 
opulent at Charleston, which to the up-country members is a different 
climate, or amongst those who are styled a plebeian race.” Unfor¬ 
tunately, the lowlands consented to the change only with reservations 
which gave the State almost two centers of government. There were 
to be two treasurers, one at Charleston and one at Columbia, the 
surveyor-general was to have his office at Columbia but to keep 
copies of his plots with a Charleston deputy, the secretary of state 
could maintain his office in either place provided he kept a deputy 
at the other, and the Governor might live at Charleston except when 
the legislature was in session. The aristocratic old capital was 
loath to part with its dignities. 

One democratic reform of marked importance, moreover, was the 
injunction laid upon the legislature to abolish the right of primo¬ 
geniture, which meant that some of Charleston’s richest ancestral 
estates, kept intact generation after generation, were now slowly to 
be broken up. It was a heavy blow to the patrician customs of the 
lowlands. No longer could the leading families build great houses 
like “Fairlawn Barony” of the Colletons, “Drayton Hall” of the 
Draytons, and “Newington” of the Blakes, assured that they would 
descend from eldest son to eldest son. A somewhat better balance 
was given the government, for the Governor gained in power by the 
abolition of the hampering executive council, and a more explicit 
definition of his authority and duties. The judiciary, too, attained 
a better footing. But upon the pivotal issue of the day and of the 
next generation the revision was a failure. 

An analogous set of conditions existed in Georgia, and an anal- 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 203 


ogous result occurred. Here, too, the lowlands were divided into 
great plantations of rice—the staple crop—and indigo, worked by 
slaves; the uplands were being settled by small farmers and cattle- 
raisers, who did much of their labor with their own hands, owning 
comparatively few negroes. Savannah was by no means another 
Charleston; it was a small center of not 1000 white souls when the 
Federal Constitution was ratified, and seemed likely to be overtaken 
soon by the new town of Augusta. But the lowlands were firmly 
entrenched in the legislature, preserved the same advantage in the 
revising convention and took care to maintain it in the new Consti¬ 
tution. By this time there were eleven counties, five on the seacoast, 
three in the middle district, and three in the uplands. The lowlands 
contained only 8475 whites and 13,261 slaves; the middle counties 
had 18,134 whites and 7202 slaves; and the uplands had 29,145 
whites and 8801 slaves. Yet it was decided that of the 34 members 
initially constituting the House, the five seacoast counties should 
send 15, the three middle counties (which inclined toward the low¬ 
lands) 10, and the three upland counties—with more whites than 
the other two sections put together—only 9. In the Senate the 
division was even more unfair, for each county sent one member. 
The economic interests of the uplands being markedly different from 
those of the rest of the State, they were bound to suffer in any 
conflict over such a subject as the basis of taxation. Moreover, the 
property qualifications for office were set at an undemocratic level, 
ranging from 200 acres, or £150 in other property, for Assemblymen, 
to 500 acres and additional property worth £1000 sterling for the 
Governor. 48 

Yet in Georgia also something was gained. The substitution of 
a bicameral for a unicameral legislature was a genuine blessing. A 
queer arrangement was made for the choice of the Governor, the 
House nominating three men, and the Senate, with its heavy lowland 
strength, choosing one of them; but his term was wisely lengthened 
to two years, and he was given a limited veto. In neither of the 
southernmost States, of course, could the revised Constitution be 
submitted to the people—the uplanders might have risen in anger 
to reject it. But while South Carolina’s convention simply promul¬ 
gated the new instrument, Georgia’s was at curiously elaborate 
pains to consult the public. The first convention, after deliberating 

48 Winterbotham’s “View of the United States,” III, 273 - 74 . 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


204 

less than three weeks, agreed to an instrument and adjourned. Half 
a thousand copies were scattered throughout the state, the justices 
and militia officers reading them to knots of citizens, and the legis¬ 
lature provided for a new ratifying convention. This, consisting 
again of three members from each county, popularly elected, made 
.certain amendments. Then a third convention was called by the 
Governor, as the legislature had directed, made a few more changes, 
and gave a final approval to the instrument. The proclamation of 
the new Constitution was accompanied by the discharge of eleven 
cannon in honor of the federate States, and the Governor, with the 
members of the convention, repaired to the Government House and 
drank a glass of wine to its prosperity. 49 They little, realized what 
was in store for their weak commonwealth. 

No other State revised its fundamental law in this period. Only 
Virginia, where the old discontents smoldered on, and Delaware, 
which rewrote its Constitution in 1792 on the general model of 
Pennsylvania’s, were in a mood seriously to consider doing so. In 
North Carolina there was much opposition to the Constitution, but 
no organized movement to replace it—its radical supporters were 
far too strong. The great fault, as R. D. Spaight wrote Iredell in 
1787, was that there existed no “sufficient check to prevent the in¬ 
temperate and unjust proceedings of our legislature,” though such a 
check was “necessary to our well-being.” The government was 
indeed ill-balanced, but it was to be decades before the State had a 
new Constitution. In Maryland an agitation commenced in 1789 
for removing all restrictions upon manhood suffrage except a 
condition as to residence, and for apportioning senators and repre¬ 
sentatives according to population instead of arbitrarily by counties; 
but neither of these sound reforms received marked attention for 
several years. New Jersey’s hasty Constitution of 1776 was under 
no severe strain in a State small in size, population, and wealth, and 
was to undergo no real overhauling for seventy years. Yet intelligent 
citizens recognized that the legislature had far too much power, and 
the other two departments of government far too little; while a study 
of the Federal Constitution emphasized other errors. In 1790 an at¬ 
tempt was made in the legislature to call a revising convention, but 
it failed. New York was still quite content with her frame of gov¬ 
ernment. Few and bold, of course, were the citizens of Connecticut 


49 Georgia Gazette, May 9, 1789; American Museum, V, 310, 608. 


CONSTITUTIONS IN OPERATION: THEIR REVISION 205 

and Rhode Island who dared breathe upon the name of the Charter- 
Constitutions. 50 

A fresh period in constitution-making was soon to be opened. It 
was to begin with the drafting of an organic law by Kentucky, the 
first western State to be admitted to the Union; for these new 
commonwealths wrote their constitutions, in one sense, de novo , 
while they fitted them to a social structure quite unlike that of the 
thirteen original States. A formative period had ended, and an era 
of growth and adaptation was to begin. 

60 See McRee’s “Iredell,” II, 169-70, for Spaight’s views of North Carolina’s gov¬ 
ernment; for the complaints in Maryland, see Maryland Journal, September 1, 1786; 
for the effort at revision in New Jersey, N. J. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series II, 
vol. II, 135 ff.; Report of the Committee of the Legislative Council on the Proposed 
Alteration of the Constitution, 1841. 






CHAPTER SIX 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 

The government carried on under the new State Constitutions was 
better than their crudity might lead us to expect. Disastrous mis¬ 
takes were made in many States in the issue of paper money, and 
made repeatedly in some; in nearly all States the Loyalists were 
treated too harshly; and in more than half of them the executive 
branch lacked the authority necessary to a vigorous administration. 
Party quarrels often generated excessive heat. The States which 
show the most shameful pages were Rhode Island, where a selfish and 
narrow-minded State Rights party plunged into deplorable financial 
heresies; Pennsylvania, where constant turmoil attended a long 
struggle over a wretched Constitution; North Carolina, where the 
government was largely in the hands of ignorant, unlettered men; 
and Georgia, where many in each of the two factions would rather 
have seen the British conquer than their rivals win. At a period 
when watchwords of democracy were glib on every tongue, in several 
States scheming cliques used the government for their special in¬ 
terest. But in general, though the new vehicles, moving on new 
roads, lurched from side to side, they recovered themselves buoy¬ 
antly. It is sometimes said that the adoption of the Federal Con¬ 
stitution saved the States from ruin. It did save the Union from 
decay, but as for the States, they were better-governed in 1788 than 
ever before, and their financial position was steadily growing stronger. 
It must be reiterated that most of the governments were not so new 
as they seemed—they were old in their main principles; and we must 
also remember that in many States the property qualifications 
excluded the most irresponsible element from the polls. 

Again, the headless nature of the State governments was some¬ 
times more apparent than real. The ablest men of the States were 
as eager to serve them as to serve the nation. Jefferson forsook the 
Continental Congress after 1776 to return to Virginia, with the 
feeling that the nearer duty lay there. Caesar Rodney, of Delaware, 

206 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 207 


ordered to Europe to find treatment for a cancer that was killing 
him, refused to leave his post as President of the State till the disease 
drove him to his death-bed. Franklin was proud, on returning from 
the French court, to be President of Pennsylvania for three years. 
When Madison left Congress in 1784 to lead the progressives in the 
Virginia House, he thought his new position hardly less conspicuous 
or responsible than the old. Men of marked talent like Clinton, 
Hancock, Mifflin, and Lowndes devoted themselves almost exclusively 
to State duties, and many more, like John Adams, Gouverneur 
Morris, Charles Pinckney, and Henry Laurens, though giving most 
of their time to the nation, kept a watchful eye on their home States. 
The Governors or Presidents were treated with a popular deference 
which helped to weaken the constitutional restrictions on their 
authority. 

In Virginia, Jefferson and Henry at different times held the govern¬ 
ment, even without special grant of powers, in the hollow of their 
hands. And during the Revolution, extra-constitutional allotments 
of authority to the chief executive were frequent, for the State 
governments simply had to be more flexible than a literal interpreta¬ 
tion of the Constitutions allowed. Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, 
and Georgia gave to Patrick Henry, Thomas Johnson, Joseph Reed, 
and Archibald Bulloch at various times wide emergency powers. 
The Virginia Legislature explained that its grant of “additional 
powers” to Governor Henry was necessary to meet “the present 
imminent danger of America, and the ruin and misery which threaten 
the good people of this commonwealth.” The Constitution-makers 
of New Jersey might write an instrument filled with suspicion of the 
Governor; but the people and legislators were actually filled with the 
warmest regard for Governor William Livingston. 

Not more than a dozen figures stand out saliently in the govern¬ 
ment of the New England States. Massachusetts had one leader, 
John Hancock, able to hold the tiller from 1776 until his death in 
1793, almost continuously Governor. Hancock at the time independ¬ 
ence was declared was not quite forty, the owner of one of the most 
flourishing businesses, as an importing and commission merchant, 
in Boston. He was as proud and ostentatious as he was wealthy, 
fond of the richest wines and food, of silver and china table-furnish¬ 
ings “the most genteel in the country,” of silk and velvet garments, 
and of a fine equipage; his mental powers did not merit comparison 


208 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


with those of John Adams or James Otis, but behind his strut he 
was the shrewdest of politicians, skilled in ingratiating himself with 
the Boston voters. Able to take or refuse the Governorship almost 
as he chose, and to make or unmake subordinates, he became one of 
the first three great “bosses” in America. Another chieftain, a 
purer patriot and abler man, Samuel Adams, who had introduced 
Hancock into politics, was in State affairs after 1776 for the most 
part in opposition to him and out of power. But immediately after 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, they became reconciled. 
With Adams and the opposition was associated Elbridge Gerry u a 
wealthy young merchant of Marblehead known as an enthusiastic 
exponent of democracy; for though changeable, Gerry in general held 
that government must at all costs be kept close to the plain people. 
He was in Congress till near the end of the Revolution. James 
Bowdoin for a time led a third faction, one thoroughly conservative, 
and at the severest crisis of the State’s early history, he was given 
an opportunity to display marked courage, tact, and vigor. 

None of the other New England States produced such a galaxy, 
for despite Hancock’s political opportunism and Samuel Adams’s lack 
of constructive talent, the Bay State group represented high ability 
and character. In New Hampshire the leaders were of rougher 
fiber and inferior training in affairs. John Pickering was a Har¬ 
vard graduate who became a lawyer at Portsmouth before the 
Revolution, and when the war began was already noted for his fluent 
tongue, social tact, and wide legal practice. A man of second-rate 
abilities, he performed his greatest service to New Hampshire when 
he did more than anyone else to induce the State to ratify the Federal 
Constitution. Old Meshech Weare was another Harvard graduate, 
who became prominent when chosen Speaker in 1752, and thereafter 
was active in Provincial affairs. During the Revolution he was the 
principal single force in the government, for besides being President 
of the Council, and Chief Justice, he was the best-trusted leader in 
the State. His correspondence with Washington was extensive. We 
may accept Belknap’s characterization of him as a man not of 
brilliant originality, but of “clear discernment, extensive knowledge, 
accurate judgment, and calm temper.” When chosen the State’s 
first head under the Constitution of 1784, Weare was already past 
seventy and died two years later. John Langdon, a wealthy ship¬ 
owner and sea-captain, who was acquainted widely in England as 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 209 

well as America when the war opened, was made useful by his 
sanguine, businesslike temper and great energy. He threw himself 
into the war with extraordinary activity, serving in Congress and 
the Legislature; building warships for the nation—on Langdon 
Island he launched the Raleigh , Ranger , and America; commanding 
a regiment at Saratoga; and taking the Presidency of New Hamp¬ 
shire in succession to Weare. He capped his career by becoming a 
United States Senator, and so ardent a Republican that he expressed 
the wish that Washington could be removed from office. John Sulli¬ 
van is best known for his military exploits, but he also served as 
State President and in the Continental Congress, posts for which his 
legal training helped qualify him. 

Connecticut’s history exhibits men of sturdy sense and moral fiber, 
but none of genius. Roger Sherman was more prominent in national 
than State affairs, though he was a member of the Committee of 
Safety in 1776-77 and 1782, and mayor of New Haven for nearly a 
decade following 1784. Jonathan Trumbull had become Governor 
long before the war broke out, in 1769, and remained in the office till 
old age forced him to retire, in 1784. There was no more sterling 
patriot in America. His successors were two men of sense but of 
common-place parts, Matthew Griswold and Samuel Huntington. 
As in Colonial days, governmental promotion was regular: a man rose 
from minor offices to be Deputy-Governor, and when the Governor 
retired, he stepped by universal consent to the higher place. Of 
the three men, Trumbull alone had a college education, having 
entered Harvard to fit himself for the ministry, but the other two 
were thoroughly self-tutored, and all three were members of the bar. 
They were democratic, hard-headed representatives of a democratic, 
hard-headed, thrifty commonwealth. In the instance of Trumbull, 
Washington paid tribute to “a long and well-spent life in the service 
of his country.” As for Rhode Island, it produced no leaders of 
preeminent ability. The three Governors whose terms cover the 
years 1775-1790, Nicholas Cooke, William Greene, and John Collins, 
were certainly not men of distinction. The two Rhode Islanders who 
made the chief reputations in their generation were Gen. James 
Varnum and David Howell, the protagonists of the struggle over the 
Federal Constitution. The former was one of the State’s badly- 
supported delegates to the Continental Congress, a man sincerely 
attached to the idea of a strong Federal union; the second was a 


210 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


lawyer of Providence, a professor in the institution now called Brown 
University, and an ardent believer in State Rights. 

Faction rather than party shaped the politics of New England from 
1776 to 1789, and many factions were purely personal. In Massa¬ 
chusetts, though there was a shadowy alignment between conserva¬ 
tives and radical democrats, we strive in vain during most years to 
discern any true party, animated by enduring principles. The fol¬ 
lowers of the various leaders frequently excited themselves over mere 
trivialities while substantial political issues lay unnoticed. Did 
Bowdoin have a less patriotic record in 1775 than Hancock? Was 
Hancock too luxurious in style of his habits? One writer said in 
1786 that the two parties in Connecticut were simply “Commutation” 
and “Non-Commutation.” “Great numbers of people were angry 
with Congress for promising more extra pay to officers and soldiers; 
but when they found that the five years’ pay, even in cash, would not 
make good the original contract with the army, and especially when 
they found that the securities were likely to depreciate, the murmurs 
ceased—the army was cheated and the people satisfied.” 1 Only the 
intensification of the conflict between the rural and the mercantile 
or maritime interests in 1785-6—born of the “hard times” following 
peace—and the clash between federalist and anti-federalist opinions, 
crystallized the New England factions into true parties. 

I. Massachusetts Politics to 1787 

The revolutionary extremists led by the Adamses and Hancock 
having effected the total rupture between Massachusetts and Eng¬ 
land, for five years, or until 1780, the government of the Bay State 
was wholly confided, under the Charter, to the Legislature. The 
chief issue during the five years was just how the Charter should be 
replaced by a Constitution, and whether the Constitution should be 
radically or conservatively democratic. Apart from this, the prin¬ 
cipal question was whether the personal ambitions of Samuel Adams 
or of Hancock for the leadership of the State should be gratified. 
Samuel Adams was in Congress, but in his absence from home able 
lieutenants, the foremost being James Warren, looked after his politi¬ 
cal interests. Hancock, who also sat in Congress 1775-80, had 
agents in Boston as adroit as those of Adams, and Hancock won the 

1 Connecticut Courant, Nov. 20, 1786. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 211 


first skirmish. In 1778, during an interval of residence at home, he 
was elected Speaker of the House in place of Warren, who was not 
even chosen to the General Court by his own town, Plymouth. The 
chagrined Warren wrote to Samuel Adams to explain this defeat, 
and gives us an inkling of how keenly party rancor was felt during 
even the darkest days of the Revolution: 

It may not satisfy you to carry it to the account only of the versatility and caprice 
of mankind. They have had their effects, but they would not do alone. Envy and 
the ambition of some people have aided them, and the policy, or rather what you will 
call the cunning of a party here, who have set up an idol [Hancock] whom they 
have determined to worship, has had the greatest. They have even made use of the 
Tories to prevent my being chosen by my town, who made their appearance on this 
occasion for the first time for seven years. The partiality of you and the rest of my 
friends made me an object of great importance with this party, and everything is 
done to get me out of sight. In short, the plan is to sacrifice you and me to the 
shrine of the idol. 3 


We can readily believe that as between Samuel Adams and the 
rich Hancock, loyalists and men of moderate opinions would choose 
the latter. But the factions behind both men, as distinguished from 
other groups in the State, worked to give Massachusetts an ultra- 
democratic government. Their ideas were met by the instrument 
which Robert Treat Paine and others wrote in 1778. 

We have seen that the opposition to this Hancockian Constitution 
crystallized in the spring of 1778 in a convention at Ipswich, where 
the Essex Junto was born. The State’s conservatives—when the 
Junto was fully launched, it included Fisher Ames, Timothy Picker¬ 
ing, George Cabot, Theophilus Parsons, and Caleb Cushing—were 
able to rally in a successful defensive struggle, and pass from it to 
offensive warfare. The defeat of the proposed Constitution was due 
largely to them; and, with Parsons leading, they also offered Massa¬ 
chusetts a constructive design possessing great merits. In the re¬ 
action against the Hancockian instrument, the two radical factions 
had to accept a subordinate position in the next Constitutional 
gathering. Samuel Adams returned from Philadelphia to attend the 
Convention of 1779-80, received the highest vote in the election of 
delegates at large for the committee which was to draw up a tentative 
Constitution, and played some part in laying the foundations of the 
new government, while Hancock also was a member. But thanks to 
John Adams, the Constitution was a marked victory for conserva¬ 
tism, and by basing the upper house upon property, it bulwarked 
the power of the prosperous merchants and shippers. Samuel 

3 Adams MSS., New York Public Library. 


212 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Adams went back to the Continental Congress in June, 1780, and 
was there when the first elections under the new basic law were 
held. Hancock stayed in Massachusetts to gain possession of the 
government framed by his adversaries. 3 

This was an easy task, and Hancock walked away from other 
aspirants for the Governorship. The election of 1780 showed three 
distinct factions, one led by Hancock, one—the followers of Samuel 
Adams—by James Warren and Elbridge Gerry, and one by the 
chieftains of the Essex Junto. The whole opposition to Hancock 
tended to group itself behind Bowdoin. Samuel Adams wrote to 
John Adams in Europe that the responsibility of the Governorship 
would “fall on the shoulders of one of two gentlemen whom you 
know.” One reason for Hancock’s easy victory was the unscrupulous 
adroitness of his adherents’ campaign. Turning on Samuel Adams, 
they had the effrontery to whisper that not only was he, the most 
unflinching of patriots, connected with the Conway Cabal, but that 
he had joined a British party, along with Laurens and the Lees! 
Turning on Bowdoin, they insisted that his share in the Revolution 
had been much less spirited than Hancock’s. 

But the principal reasons for Hancock’s victory lay in his splendid 
record as a patriot and benefactor of his fellow citizens. It was 
recalled that as a rich merchant he had lost thousands of pounds in 
the war; that he had been bracketed with Samuel Adams in the 
famous British order which, in June, 1775, exempted these two 
leaders from Gage’s pardon; and that he had been the first to sign 
the Declaration of Independence. In Philadelphia he had sat as 
president of Congress for more than two years, and had made an 
imposing return in the autumn of 1777, escorted part of the way by 
dragoons. Chosen moderator of the first subsequent town meeting 
in Boston, he had been thanked for a gift of 150 cords of wood to 
the poor, one of many generous acts. In the following May he had 
received a higher vote than anyone else as Boston’s representative in 
the General Court; and in the same year he had notified his debtors 
that he wished to be paid in paper money and not silver, though a 
dollar in silver was worth at least $3.50 in bills. It was later said 
that he had lost £26,000 by thus doing poor debtors a favor and 
proclaiming his belief in the paper currency. He had commanded 
the Massachusetts militia in their expedition with D’Estaing against 

*A. E. Morse, “Federalist Party in Mass, to 1800,” p. 19 ff.; Barry’s “Mass.,” 
Ill, 180. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 213 


Newport, and upon his return took the lead in entertaining D’Esta- 
ing’s men, dining about forty officers at his home each day, and 
paying for a banquet of five hundred covers in Faneuil Hall. Bow- 
doin, on the other hand, had refused to accept a nomination to the 
first Continental Congress on account of his ill health, and had since 
taken little part in public affairs. As for personal popularity, Han¬ 
cock’s qualities gave him all the advantages of an Alcibiades. He 
was a handsome man, in the prime of life, he was eloquent, and 
about him hung the engaging air of the old aristocracy. 4 

Less than 12,300 ballots were cast—not one fourth of the electors 
voted 5 —and of these Hancock received about 11,000, sixteen Mother 
men dividing the remainder. His choice gave general satisfaction, 
and he received a number of flattering addresses. Even Samuel 
Adams wrote his wife that “many circumstances have combined to 
make this election appear to be politically necessary.” The Governor 
was inaugurated with a pomp that dismayed Puritans and sticklers 
for republican simplicity. The bright October day was ushered in 
with ringing bells and firing cannon; the Legislature met at ten, and 
after Hancock had taken the oath, he was proclaimed to a rejoicing 
crowd from the State House balcony; the militia were paraded, 
thirteen guns were fired, and the troops and shipping discharged a 
salute; and then the Legislature and Governor Hancock heard Dr. 
Samuel Cooper discourse in the Old Brick Meeting House from the 
text: “And their congregation shall be established; and their nobles 
shall be of themselves; and their governor shall proceed out of the 
midst of them.” A sumptuous dinner followed in Faneuil Hall, 
where thirteen toasts were drunk in the best Madeira. 6 Thereafter, 
the Governor usually went out in an elegant chariot which had 
caused much stir in Philadelphia. His Beacon Street home—“the 
Stone House”—was fine, it was finely furnished, and he and his wife, 
Dorothy Quincy, dressed finely. But those who took offense were 
few. So effectually had the opposition been stamped out that in the 
fall of 1780, when Samuel Adams was put up for the Secretaryship 
of the Commonwealth, he was beaten by a Hancockian named Avery. 7 


* See the resolutions praising Hancock voted by the Boston town meeting on Oct. 
16, 1780; Boston Gazette, Oct. 23, 1780. The Chamberlain MSS., Boston Public 
Library, contain (No. 255) a statement of some £ 4,737 damage done Hancocks 
estate by the British. 

6 Boston Gazette, April 2, 1781. 

T ShoTtly 0 afte 3 r°’Hancock became Governor, General Sullivan wrote him from Phila¬ 
delphia in congratulation. He expressed some surprise that^Bowdoin, apparently so 
lukewarm at the crisis of the Revolutionary uprising, 


should have received such 


214 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


And very popular for a time the Hancock regime remained. In 
1781 Bowdoin was again defeated, by the smashing vote of 7966 to 
304, and in 1782 by a smaller but no less eloquent majority—5855 
to 1155. Nevertheless, the opposition slowly developed a material 
strength. Hancock, true to his radical democratic principles, failed 
to press for adequate steps to restore the depreciated currency and 
to establish the public credit; and the creditor class thus grew more 
and more dissatisfied. He was one of the most prominent American 
believers in State autonomy, and the merchants saw clearly that they 
would gain if, in defiance of his wishes, Congress were given more 
authority. In the spring of 1781, his opponent Samuel Adams 
received a remarkable vote in Boston for the General Court, 8 and 
he was repeatedly chosen president of the Senate. Hancock was 
reelected Governor in 1783 and 1784, by unknown majorities, for 
the vote was not recorded. 9 But we do know that in the latter 
year, the election developed violent party feeling, involving both 
State and national issues. The question of the impost amend¬ 
ment to the Articles of Confederation was then coming before the 
Legislature, and the party representing trade took the Congressional 
side of the issue, while Hancock leaned to the other. In the guber¬ 
natorial campaign, both sides resorted to every possible weapon, 
even bringing charges of Toryism against the other. The contest 
showed a growing conservative strength, and it alarmed the Governor. 

Moreover, as the year 1784 passed, Hancock saw that trouble was 
brewing among the poorer folk of the western part of the State. 
Especially in the Berkshires, there was already rampant the dis¬ 
content soon to explode in Shays’s Rebellion, alarming all America; 
discontents arising partly from the State Constitution, for the radicals 
objected to the existence of the Senate, the fact that the principal 
officers of government were not annually dependent upon the General 
Court for their salaries, and other “aristocratic” features, but chiefly 
proceeding from the sore economic straits of the people. The State 
treasury was nearly empty, the taxes not having been collected during 
the past year, and only partly collected for preceding years; the 

large vote. The letter was captured, and published first in Rivington’s Gazette, New 
York, and then in a Boston paper. A warm controversy followed, and Judge James 
Sullivan took his brother’s part, though he discountenanced the slur upon Bowdoin. 
Amory’s “Sullivan,” I, 109. 

8 Boston Gazette, May 21, 1781. 

8 The Mass. Centinel of April 7, 1784, simply says that the people met at Faneuil 
Hall at nine to elect the State officers, that the poll closed at one, and that Hancock 
and Cushing were chosen “by a vast majority of votes.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 215 


State’s creditors were becoming impatient; and the commercial men 
and moneyed interests of Boston were rebellious over the economic 
situation, opposing bitterly the paper-money and other measures of 
relief asked by the western farmers and villagers. European credi¬ 
tors were demanding money of them, and they could not be cheated 
of their own unpaid accounts by stay laws and depreciated currency. 

Hancock was infirm, and amid these difficulties his physician 
helped him find an escape; he resigned January 29, 1785, upon the 
ground of illness. We can only guess whether his plea of ill health 
was a valid excuse. John Adams has written that Hancock had “a 
delicate constitution,” and that “a great part of his life was passed 
in acute pain.” In the fall of 1785 he was undoubtedly so sick at 
his country home that he feared he might be prevented from going 
to Philadelphia. 10 But Hancock frequently used a minor malady 
as an excuse for avoiding a difficult decision or duty. In 1781, 
during an agitation over a repeal of the State tender act, Mrs. John 
Adams wrote: “The Governor, as has been heretofore predicted, 
when anything not quite popular is in agitation, has the gout and is 
confined to bed.” Years later he used his gout to explain his rudeness 
in failing to call upon President Washington during the latter’s visit 
to Boston, and finally had himself carried into Washington’s presence, 
swathed in flannels. His resignation in 1785 was quite unexpected, 
even by close friends, and a source of great joy to his opponents. 
They could not believe that he was sincere, and accused him of 
expecting the General Court to refuse his resignation and to direct 
him to keep his position, while recovering his health, by letting the 
Lieutenant-Governor perform its duties. When Hancock came to 
the floor of the House to take leave, his supporters shed tears, while 
his political enemies showed what the former called an “indecent” 
pleasure. 11 But the resignation was a shrewd political move. 

Upon Hancock’s retirement, which took place just before the 
spring election, there occurred a hot contest between the conserva¬ 
tive candidate, Bowdoin, and the Hancockian candidate, Lieutenant- 
Governor Cushing. Cushing was assailed as a mere seat-warmer 
for Hancock, whose weaknesses were unsparingly set forth. The 


10 See James Sullivan’s letter upon his illness, “Life and Corr. of Rufus King, 

X * ii Gerry who with C. Gore tells this, “Life and Corr. of King,” I, 75 - 6 , 80-1, 
savs that when “his proposition to resign was in polite terms encouraged by the Leg- 
Suture h!^ was much chagrined and disgusted but delayed his resignation three 
weeks, and was then under the necessity of proffering it, as all resources failed him 
for making retreat.” Cf. Adams, Three Episodes in Mass. Hist., II, 892. 


216 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


luxurious extravagance which the Governor had shown in “the Stone 
House” was rebuked. It was said that while it was a recognized 
duty of the Governor to prepare a comprehensive, accurate state¬ 
ment of the condition of the commonwealth for each Legislature, the 
indolent Hancock had not done so, and that he had failed to corre¬ 
spond with General Washington and other national leaders, leaving 
Massachusetts in want of valuable military and other information. 

Bowdoin, on the other hand, was assailed for his alleged luke¬ 
warmness during the Revolution. Had he not refused to go to 
Congress, or to accept the Lieutenant-Governorship in 1780? “Shall 
we confer dignities on a man who withheld his services from his 
country at a time of her distress?” It was said that Tory factors, 
British agents who had come to Massachusetts to collect old debts, 
and Boston merchants who wished to trade with England on any 
terms, were assisting Bowdoin, and that his election would be a body- 
blow to independence. In the west, the natural tendency of those 
who hoped for paper money and stay-laws was to vote against the 
Governor. The local retailers and money-lenders, pressed by Boston 
creditors, were requiring payment from the farmers, and beginning 
to threaten foreclosure and distraint. Tax-collectors were demanding 
cash. The agrarian party knew that Cushing and the House would 
take their side, while Bowdoin and the Senate would oppose soft 
money or a moratorium. In Boston, Bowdoin naturally polled 
almost two votes to one over Cushing, but outside the two ran neck 
and neck. The vote given General Lincoln prevented either from 
receiving a majority, and threw the election into the legislature. 12 

This result was known finally on May 11, 1785, and between that 
date and May 25, when the Legislature settled the contest, the cam¬ 
paign between Bowdoin and Cushing raged more fiercely than ever. 
British favors, said Bowdoin’s opponents, were being planned by his 
faction—British commerce, the admission of British refugees from 
American soil, British claims, and “in short, British everything.” 
In retaliation, Bowdoin’s party declared that Hancock’s plan was to 
have the Legislature elect Cushing as Governor, to have Cushing 
refuse the post, and then to leave it unfilled for another year, when 
Hancock could be called upon to save the State from grave em¬ 
barrassment by reclaiming it. During the year the seat was empty, 


12 Mass. Centinel, April 2, 6, 16, and May 11. In the whole State, Bowdoin hac 
3502 votes, Cushing 2997, Lincoln 1141, and Oliver Prescott 298. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 217 


Cushing as Lieutenant-Governor would perform the duties of 
Governor, and receive the emoluments of both offices. 13 The heat 
of the contest in Boston alarmed some country towns. When the 
House met, it named Cushing by 134 votes, and Bowdoin by 89, as 
candidates to be presented to the Senate; and the Senate sensibly 
chose Bowdoin by a vote of 18 to io. 14 

Bowdoin made an excellent Governor during the trying year which 
followed, a year in which the social discontent rose steadily towards 
a climax. To his reelection in 1786 there was no real opposition 
outside of the western districts. In Boston on the April election 
day he received all the votes save a complimentary baker’s dozen 
cast for Hancock. In the whole State he was given no fewer than 
6,001 votes out of a total of 8,231. 15 His victory naturally intensified 
the discontent of the radical agrarians, while it left the seaport towns 
well satisfied. 

Already the storm in the western counties was beginning to mutter 
threateningly. Money was so scarce that in the rural regions the 
general payment of taxes and debts was out of the question. When 
the creditors called upon sheriffs and courts to help them collect 
their debts, and mortgages were foreclosed upon the property of the 
poor, popular wrath rose against the law and its agents. Poor 
citizens grumbled that the costs of State government were excessive. 
The spring session of the Legislature in 1786 rejected all petitions 
for an issue of paper money, and at the same time granted the 
supplementary funds asked by Congress, thus increasing the tax 
burden. The cry went up from desperate farmers and villagers that 
the Legislature was corrupt or prejudiced, and that it must sit in 
some small town, not under the influence of Boston merchants and 
lawyers. Riotous attacks upon the courts occurred, and before the 
end of summer it was plain that harsh measures were required. 
Governor Bowdoin’s foresight and energy anticipated every demand, 
and when Shays’s Rebellion came to a head early in 1787, it was 
instantly crushed by an armed force. Arrests were made, the courts 
were put in rapid motion, and fourteen ringleaders were convicted of 
treason. Meanwhile, commissioners were sent into the rebellious 
counties, and they received the submission, with promises of good 


13 Mass. Centinel, May 14, 21, 25. The agitation against British “factors” led to a 
meeting in Boston on April 15 to consider what to do with them; Morse, “Fed. 
Party,” 29*31. 

14 “Life and Corr. of King,” I, 100-101; Mass. Centinel, May 28. 

16 Mass. Centinel, March 25, 1786; April 1, April 5, June 3. 


2 l8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


behavior, of most of the insurgents. Men of property and sense 
had reason to be highly grateful to Bowdoin, whose judicious 
measures had upheld the Government without needless bloodshed. 

However, the very firmness of Governor Bowdoin’s course gave 
offense to large classes, and this discontent offered Hancock his 
longed-for opportunity to become Governor again. Partly because 
of the numerous casualties among the rebels, partly because of the 
feeling that the Boston merchants were bleeding the rural poor, 
Bowdoin had no chance of carrying the western counties. Friends 
of the fourteen men from that section sentenced to death feared that 
his election would seal their fate, while they hoped that Hancock 
would pardon them. Conservatives like Chief Justice Parsons and 
Sedgwick were for executing the prisoners, and even Samuel Adams 
sternly asserted that “the man who dares to rebel against the laws 
of a republic ought to suffer death.” It was feared that Bowdoin 
sympathized with this view. Moreover, many who had no particular 
pity for the condemned rebels believed that under Hancock’s mild 
sway the State would return more rapidly to general harmony than 
if Bowdoin remained in the chair. The newspaper war in the cam¬ 
paign of 1787 was as feverish as in 1785. While Samuel Adams 
and Stephen Higginson led the supporters of Bowdoin, James Sulli¬ 
van, who had defended some of the prisoners professionally, again 
exerted his influence for Hancock. Hancock had by no means been 
laid on the shelf during the last two years; he had been chosen a 
member of the House in May, 1785, by Boston, a little later he was 
elected delegate to Congress, and he had again become its President, 
so that his prestige was undiminished. Said a Boston paper at the 
end of March: 16 

All accounts from the country agree, that the electioneering mania never raged 
with greater violence in this commonwealth than it does at the present moment—the 
insurgents in all parts seeming determined to effect by law, that which they could 
not by conventions and arms. 

Friends of Bowdoin charged Hancock with wasting his estate; not 
so, said defenders, he reduced it by charity and patriotism. Some 
declared that Hancock, who was reputed to be much involved in debt 
and unable to pay, would bring in paper money; not so, averred 
his supporters, he had opposed paper money in the House. Bow¬ 
doin’s friends urged his reputation for boldness as the best guarantee 
that the revolt would not break forth again, and asserted that be- 

18 Mass. Centinel, March 28, 1787. See also issues of March 21, 24, and 31. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 219 


lievers in sound government in other States awaited the issue “with an 
anxiety not to be described.” They made political capital of the fact 
that Bowdoin had put forth an earnest effort to collect the tax 
arrears, which Hancock’s good nature had allowed to pile up to an 
enormous figure. The first attempt in the State at a political 
roorback was their circulation of a handbill a few days before election, 
stating that Hancock had surrendered to the insurgents. “It is said, 

that a committee from their body has waited upon Mr. H- to 

request his acceptance of the chair, if their influence could effect his 
choice to it, and also to know his mind with respect to the intro¬ 
duction of a paper currency: to both which propositions he has given 
his assent.” Far from stooping to such weapons, Bowdoin himself 
did not solicit a vote. The queer issue of the Governor’s salary 
played a slight part in diminishing his support. The Legislature had 
passed a bill reducing the stipend from £1100 to £800, and this 
Bowdoin courageously vetoed, to the resentment of some rural dis¬ 
tricts, because he thought it wrong to curtail his successors’ income. 17 

If ever a Governor deserved reelection it was Bowdoin, but cir¬ 
cumstances were too much for him. Even some supporters of his 
administration, like Stephen Higginson, thought it had been rather 
too harsh. In Boston the two men ran neck and neck, but Hancock 
led, 77s to 724, 18 and when the heavy western returns came in, 
Bowdoin was found to have a total of only 6,394 votes, as against 
18,459 for Hancock. As the excitement of Shays’s Rebellion passed 
away, the State was thus again headed by its original executives, 
Hancock and Cushing. The agrarian radicals had failed in their 
legislative program through the opposition of the Senate, though at 
the fall session of 1786 their tax burden had been lightened. They 
had failed in the field because of Bowdoin’s energy. Now they found 
what consolation they could in setting up the old Governor again. 19 

The election left the Bowdoin party—a party which comprised 
those opposed to unrestrained democracy, and which became the 
nucleus of Federalism in Massachusetts—bitter over what naturally 
seemed a gross injustice. 20 They vehemently assailed their rivals, 
and the newspaper warfare was maintained till late in the fall; the 


JT Holland, “Hist. Western Mass.,” I, 282 ff. See Mass^ Centinel, March 24 and 27, 
for charges of Hancock’s connection with the rebels. Cf. Sparks, Letters to Wash¬ 
ington,” IV, 239, for Jonathan Trumbull’s low opinion of Hancock and high esteem 
for Bowdoin. 

18 Mass. Centinel, April 4, 1787. . T 

19 Idem, May 24, 1787; Conn. Magazine, June 14, 1787* 

20 Morse, “Fed. Party in Mass.,” 41. 



220 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


acrid diary jottings and letters of young J. Q. Adams show with 
what indignation thoughtful Bostonians generally regarded this ex¬ 
hibition of “the caprice of an ungrateful populace.” 21 But thence¬ 
forth the Hancockian party controlled the State until its chieftain’s 
death, the personality of the proud, gouty old leader dominating 
every other political force. During the summer after his election 
everyone was eager to learn what his attitude would be toward the 
Federal Constitution, then being written. 

II. Other New England States to 1787 

In New Hampshire no one man came so near controlling State 
politics as Hancock did those of the southern neighbor; and political 
currents flowed much more equably, except when the State was 
agitated by the paper money question. During the Revolution the 
inchoate government was nominally in the hands of the lower House, 
but as a matter of fact it was left to Meshech Weare, Matthew 
Thornton, and a few others whom the people trusted, and who in 
stormy days had arrogated to themselves extensive powers. For 
nine years Weare was the principal figure in the State. Year after 
year the upper house chose him its president, and in the popular 
elections under the new Constitution of 1784, he was made President 
of the State by a great majority. 22 Physical disability forcing his 
retirement in 1785, there appeared a number of aspirants, the chief 
being George Atkinson, John Langdon, and General John Sullivan. 
In Sullivan the State saw its chief military hero. He had been a 
rising young lawyer when the war began, a rollicking, bustling Irish¬ 
man, as tough and staunch as a blackthorn, who had served in the 
militia and attained the rank of major; and he was chosen a delegate 
to the first Continental Congress. At the close of 1774, he and 
Langdon led the expedition which bloodlessly captured Fort William 
and Mary, in Portsmouth harbor. First as a brigadier and later as a 
major general, he served with great credit in a number of campaigns, 
particularly when Washington’s discretion controlled him, and in 
1779, for his operations against the Tories and Iroquois in New York, 
received the thanks of Congress. 

21 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series 2, Vol. XVI, 404. For Samuel Adams 
on Shays’s Rebellion, see Fiske, “Critical Period,” 184; for the views of Stephen 
Higgmson, Rept. 'Am, Hist. Assn. 1896, p. 754. 

23 For this election, see Portsmouth corr. of Md. Journal, July 16, 1784. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 221 

But it was also felt that the State owed much to John Langdon, 
the bluff sea-captain, whose personality was more dashing than 
Sullivan’s. His supporters recalled that he had distinguished him¬ 
self in opposition to the royal Governor; that “his complaints of our 
oppressions once reached the royal throne”; that he ventured his 
fortune in building warships, thus providing employment as well as 
defense; that he had contributed a 20-gun ship to the expedition 
against Penobscot, and uncomplainingly, after long delay, received 
pay for it in depreciated paper currency; and finally, that after the 
war “his enterprise gave to business a spring, when it was in a state 
of almost total stagnation.” 23 The popular vote was indecisive. 
The House then sent the names of Atkinson and Langdon up to the 
Senate, which chose the latter (June, 1785). 24 

Sullivan’s opportunity came the next year, when he was elected 
President (June, 1786) by a clear popular majority. 25 As in Massa¬ 
chusetts, the paper-money agitation made the close of 1786 and the 
opening months of 1787 critical, and Sullivan, like Bowdoin, dis¬ 
charged his duty with discretion and vigor. When in September a 
mob menaced the members of the Legislature at Exeter, Sullivan 
placed himself at the head of the militia, and quickly dispersed them. 
The good sense of New Hampshire rapidly asserted itself against 
the unwise agrarian scheme for a new paper issue. But Sullivan, 
like Bowdoin, had offended too many voters to receive the endorse¬ 
ment of an immediate reelection. John Langdon and Judge Samuel 
Livermore stood for the Presidency against him, each with a loyal 
following among those who had not countenanced the riots. The 
rioters and their friends sought their natural revenge at the polls. 
Sullivan, wrote the correspondent of the New York Journal, “has 
lost a great number of votes by his . . . patriotic efforts in support 
of the government of this State, when attacked by a lawless and 
insulting rabble; all the towns from whence the mob came, which 
attacked the General Court at Exeter, having generally voted for 
another candidate.” 26 In even the two principal towns, both con¬ 
servative, Sullivan made a poor showing. The election was thrown 
into the Legislature, which once more chose Langdon. 27 He suited 
the discontented element in the State better than any other man, 

23 N. H. Mercury, March 2, 1785, essay by “Candidus.” 

24 Idem, June 14, 1785. 

26 Idem, June 21, 1786. 

26 N. Y. Journal, June 14, 1787- , , T 0 

27 N. H. Mercury, March 14, 28; Pa. Packet, March 29, June 13, 1787. 


222 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


but as in Massachusetts, this element could do nothing but settle 
down and wait for better times. 28 

In Connecticut there were even fewer political antagonisms than 
in New Hampshire, for the State showed a remarkable degree of 
unanimity in its attitude towards all political questions. It was 
little troubled by governmental errors in financial policy, and their 
consequences upon the people. The people were ardently patriotic 
during the war, and after it showed zeal in supporting the erection 
of the Federal Government. They were largely of one religious faith, 
one economic condition, and one social view. The commonwealth had 
the advantage of passing from the Colonial status to full Statehood 
not only without change of fundamental law or Governor, but with¬ 
out having to displace more than a few subordinate officers. 

When the Revolution began, Governor Trumbull was so universally 
liked that “it was a rare thing to see a counting of the votes,” as the 
leading Connecticut journal said, his annual reelection being a matter 
of course. Trumbull was the ideal man for the place, a practical, 
hard working, versatile Yankee. He had been in public life since 
the early thirties, when he had been chosen to the Legislature and 
commissioned lieutenant in the “Troop of Horse”; he had been 
Governor since 1769; his early training for the ministry was a de¬ 
cided asset in a State where church and government were so closely 
linked; and being a farmer and merchant, and the son of a cooper, he 
had the confidence of agricultural, mercantile, and laboring interests. 
He had a store, warehouse, and wharf at Haddam, on the Con¬ 
necticut, others at Norwich, and ships to carry his own goods. From 
the prosperous farmers of Windham County he bought cattle, sheep, 
horses, salt meat, and grain, collected them, and sent them by long 
wagon trains to the two towns, where they were taken by his vessels 
to the West Indies, and exchanged for sugar, salt, molasses, rum, and 
cotton. Long before the Revolution Trumbull had become one of 
the rich men of New England. He owned a spacious mansion on 
the main street of Lebanon, and a store, grist-mill, an(j several farms 
in that township. When the news of Lexington reached Connecticut, 

28 The House decidedly preferred Langdon, who was especially popular in the 
interior, while the Senate insisted upon Sullivan. Langdon’s following in many 
ways resembled that of Hancock in Massachusetts; Sullivan was popular with the 
merchants of Portsmouth and Dover much as was Bowdoin with those of Boston. 
See the ( Portsmouth correspondence of the Providence Gazette, April 2, 1785, for 
Langdon’s strength in the inland towns. Portsmouth gave Sullivan 120 ballots, almost 
exactly half her vote; Dover 169 ballots; and Concord only 6. The whole State vote 
was: Langdon 3619, Sullivan 2850, Livermore 583, Bartlett 457, Atkinson 100. 


P 0 UT 1 CAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 223 

the Governor hastily converted his Lebanon store into a supply- 
depot, and for days worked feverishly, coatless and hatless, his gray 
locks loose in the breeze, giving tents and rations to the train-bands 
that came through, and packing wagons with munitions, provisions, 
and clothing for the camps about Boston. This little shop through¬ 
out the war was one of the government centers of Connecticut. 
Hundreds of meetings of the Governor and Council were held there, 
and within its walls at various times stood Washington, John Adams, 
Hancock, Jefferson, Greene, and Rochambeau. Trumbull was as 
able as Governor Clinton or Governor Bowdoin, more unselfish and 
purer than the former, and more energetic than the latter. 29 

Yet in the darkest years of the Revolution Trumbull’s popular 
vote (the choice of the Governor was by secret vote in town meet¬ 
ings, or if no man had a popular majority, by the Legislature) fell 
to remarkably low levels, and that for his rivals rose high. The dis¬ 
content of the electorate under the heavy load of taxes and army 
service found a natural vent in blaming the honest Governor. Why 
not meet these terrible expenses, frugal-minded Yankees asked, by 
other means than immediate taxation? Friends of the prominent 
younger men of the State, as Samuel Huntington and Oliver Wolcott, 
both “signers” and long delegates to the Continental Congress, could 
hardly help feeling that Trumbull by 1782 had held office long 
enough. The British took pains to spread slanders adroitly de¬ 
signed to injure him. Tavern gossip and Tory rumor accused him 
of sharing in the illicit trade with the King’s army in New York, 
a trade which he of all men was doing the most to disrupt and 
punish. The enemy exposed cases ostensibly containing smuggled 
commodities on the New York docks, marked with Trumbull’s name; 
and they shipped similar boxes on vessels bound up the New England 
coast, so that American officers held captive by them became con¬ 
vinced of Trumbull’s guilt. 

In 1780 the vote for Trumbull was only 3598 as against 3668 
for all other candidates combined; the Legislature, however, sensibly 
reelected him by a ballot of 107 to 9. The spring session of 1781 
chose him again by a vote of 104 to 18, William Pitkin, Wolcott, and 
Huntington being his principal rivals. In the next few months the 
silly stories about the Governor’s shafe in smuggling spread until 
even his quiet disdain was disturbed, and on January 29, 1782, he 

20 Stuart’s “Trumbull”; Trumbull’s “Trumbull”; Todd, “In Olde Conn.,” Ch. 10. 


224 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


requested the General Assembly to conduct an official investigation. 
The Legislature appointed a committee, with Wolcott as chairman, 
which of course reported that the charges were “false, slanderous, 
and altogether groundless,” and in all probability originated by 
enemy agents. A fuller vindication was granted Trumbull in the elec¬ 
tion of 1782, when the people gave him a generous majority. 30 He 
was now about to retire, and he prized this victory. No man in the 
State had voluntarily sacrificed so large a part of his wealth in the 
Revolution as Trumbull. A story is told how, in the winter of 
1780, when the army was in dire need, Governor Trumbull ordered 
contributions for relief taken in the churches on a Sunday; how in 
the meeting-house at Lebanon his call was read from the pulpit; 
and how Mrs. Trumbull rose and laid on the altar a fine scarlet cloak 
she wore, a gift from Rochambeau. For eight years the Governor 
paid no attention to his business, and allowed it to sink into ruin. 

Yet at the close of the Revolution, as during it, many voters 
somehow connected Trumbull with their tax-burdens. We have 
quoted the statement of one observer that the State was divided 
between two parties, “Commutation” and “Non-Commutation,” and 
that numbers of farmers and townsmen were angry with Congress 
for its grant of half-pay to officers. This observer mentions also 
the existence of a post-Revolutionary faction which hated the Cin¬ 
cinnati. The industrious, saving people of Connecticut abominated 
anything which looked like avoidable expense, and equally detested 
anything that savored of aristocracy. Governor Trumbull, like most 
other men of station in Connecticut, unquestionably agreed with 
Washington that the officers ought to be given a generous grant in 
commutation of their claims. He wished for a stronger, closer Union, 
and in both a suitable reward to all veterans, and State payments 
into the national treasury to make that reward, he beyond doubt 
acquiesced. But the General Assembly in 1780 instructed Connec¬ 
ticut’s delegates in Congress to oppose the half-pay plan, and when 
in 1782 it passed an act empowering Congress to collect import 
duties in the State, it added the provision that no money so collected 
should be used for a half-pay grant. There was a small body of 
anti-federalist sentiment in the State, and it was of course aligned 
against Trumbull. The Governor’s son Jonathan was a charter 

30 Trumbull’s “Trumbull,” 288 ff.; Corr. and Journals of S. B. Webb, II, 260- 
61; III, 14. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 225 

member of the Cincinnati, and Trumbull’s approval of the order is 
shown by his later acceptance of an honorary membership. It is 
not at all strange that when the annual election was held in May, 
1783, he once more failed of a popular majority. The Legislature, 
however, reelected him without hesitation, 96 to 22. 

Trumbull was now seventy-three, and when the General Assembly 
met in October, he resigned. He dwelt on the fact that his life was 
“worn out almost in the constant cares of office.” Indeed, he saw 
only one more autumn. Characteristically, he struck a religious note 
in his last message: “I think it my duty to retire from the busy 
concerns of public affairs; that at the evening of my days, I may 
sweeten their decline, by devoting myself with less avocation, and 
more attention, to the duties of religion, the service of God, and 
preparation for a future happier state of existence.” 

The old Governor was succeeded by Matthew Griswold, who had 
begun life as a poor boy, had prepared himself for the bar by un¬ 
remitting labor, and in 1765 had been one of the Councilors who had 
refused to swear support of the Stamp Act. As Deputy-Governor he 
had been at Trumbull’s elbow throughout the war, shared his views, 
and was his natural successor. Although he had a plurality of the 
popular vote, he received less than a third of it, and was chosen by 
the Legislature. Two years later Samuel Huntington took the office 
and held it for a decade—another fine example of the self-taught 
man of rural origin, a Norwich lawyer who had once been president 
of the Continental Congress. He proved an energetic friend of the 
Federal Constitution, and it was in part owing to his efforts that 
Connecticut was the first New England State to ratify it. During 
his and Griswold’s administration political feeling over even the 
paper money question did not rise high. 31 

When we turn to Rhode Island, we turn to a much stormier record, 
though for some time there were few divisions among the patriots. 
Nicholas Cooke, chosen Governor when Wanton was deposed, was 
of unassailable Whig principles. He had acquired a fortune and 
respect as a merchant. But the real Revolutionary leader had been 
and for several years continued to be Stephen Hopkins, of Provi¬ 
dence, who had been a good Governor in the fifties and sixties, and 
who in his radical temperament was not unlike Samuel Adams. He 
shared with Nathanael Greene the chief burden of directing the con- 

81 For sketches of Griswold and Huntington, see Conn. Magazine, VII, 170 ff. 


226 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


flict in the desperately beleaguered State. Newport, the fourth city 
in the nation, was lost to the enemy early in 1777, and thereafter the 
southern towns were incessantly harried. The attack of Sullivan and 
D’Estaing on Newport was an ignominious failure, and Rhode Island 
was not free from the enemy until the fall of 1779, when Clinton 
voluntarily evacuated it. The patriots saw that stern sacrifices were 
so indispensable for victory that internal bickering would mean ruin. 
Cooke, worn out, resigned in the spring of 1778, and William 
Greene, another rich merchant, the son of a Colonial Governor, was 
chosen in his stead, holding the office for eight years. 

Before the final signing of peace with England, a struggle opened 
in Rhode Island over the requests of the Continental Congress for 
proper financial support, while after the peace the paper money 
question grew steadily more acute. The cleavage between the two 
parties, one for sound money and Federal measures, and one against 
both, would not have been so well-defined but for certain economic 
facts. As in Massachusetts and even in the two other New England 
States, the war brought prosperity to a considerable group of 
merchants and shippers. There were fat war contracts to be filled; 
there was the usual trade for supplying a growing population with 
overseas commodities; and for the boldest spirits there was a perfect 
mine of riches in privateering. In Newport the British occupation 
ruined many substantial citizens, and drove away most of the Hebrew 
traders who had helped give the city its reputation for commercial 
enterprise. But Providence grew the richer by the transfer of New¬ 
port’s commerce, and by engrossing nearly all the privateering en¬ 
terprise. Moreover, the depression in Newport was brief: a steady 
recovery followed the British evacuation, so that by 1784 much new 
wealth had been created there. Unfortunately, not only was the 
wealth confined to a few groups even in the towns, but all the while, 
as in the other New England States, the rural population grew poorer, 
fell deeper into debt, and began to regard the future with more and 
more desperation. Taxation to pay the public debts seemed espe¬ 
cially severe in Rhode Island, for the State was small, well settled, 
and without claims to western lands. It could not assist itself by 
the sale of large land-grants to settlers, and it could not hope for a 
rapid expansion of its population. 

The “country party” born out of this discontent was a State Rights 
party, opposed to a firmer national union. It did not wish Congress 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 227 

given control over imports, with the right to lay even a five per cent, 
duty, for this would raise the price of the imports used; it did not 
wish to pay the money requisitions constantly made by Congress. 
Many townspeople shared these views, while some intelligent farmers 
doubtless opposed them, so that the title “country party” was not 
wholly accurate. But it is significant that David Howell, the Provi¬ 
dence lawyer, who led the opposition in 1782 to the impost amend¬ 
ment, took the pseudonym of “A Farmer.” 

Howell’s essays against the impost plan appeared in the leading 
Rhode Island newspaper, the Providence Gazette, in March and 
April, 1782. An equally able series of rejoinders was published by 
General James M. Varnum, a member of Congress, in the same sheet 
in March, April, and May. To a certain extent, the issue figured in 
the Assembly elections that spring, and so far as it did, the country 
party was victorious. When the Assembly met, it promptly retired 
the three delegates then sitting in the Continental Congress, Varnum, 
Daniel Mowry, and William Ellery, and elected four men who were 
less favorable to the impost amendment—Howell, John Collins, 
General Ezekiel Cornell, and Jonathan Arnold. Howell was at once 
sent on to Philadelphia to defend the position of the State there, for 
it was now alone—except for Georgia, expected momently to yield— 
in denying the impost to Congress. When the Rhode Island Assem¬ 
bly re-convened in the fall of 1782, it voted unanimously against 
the impost plan, and by its decided stand alone prevented the ful¬ 
fillment of all the hopes of Congress. Furthermore, in the spring of 
1783 the legislature again rejected the impost; “by so great a ma¬ 
jority, and from such false reasoning,” General Greene dolefully 
wrote, “that I begin to despair of their coming into the measure at 
all; at least in season to save us either from convulsions or bank¬ 
ruptcy.” 32 

However, the opposition to the State Rights party began to gain 
strength. This very spring of 1783 Varnum, making a gallant fight, 
had seemed for a time to win over the majority sentiment. General 
Greene had written Robert Morris that the impost plan would suc¬ 
ceed if the Assembly could be persuaded first to pass it in qualified 
form, and then be led to perfect its grant. In February, 1785, the 
Legislature was actually induced to make a concession. It laid a 
State duty precisely like the national duty Congress had proposed, 

32 Greene, "Life of Nathanael Greene,” III, 523 ff. 


228 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


and provided that $8000 annually of the proceeds should be used 
to pay the State’s share of the foreign debt of the nation; while at 
the same time, it granted Congress the power to regulate the im¬ 
portation of foreign goods in foreign ships. The commercial interests 
of Rhode Island were awakening to their stake in the whole question, 
and that fall they were able to push the Assembly a step further: 
it gave Congress power to prohibit foreign importations in American 
ships. Finally, in March, 1786, the Assembly took the long-desired 
step, and adopted the new impost plan, on condition only that the 
other States should consent to Congressional regulation of interstate 
trade. Little Rhode Island wished for such regulation because while 
it was lacking her stronger neighbors had it in their power greatly 
to injure her commerce by discriminatory duties. 

But after having thus triumphed, the commercial party, favorable 
to a strong national government, was suddenly overthrown by a 
political revolution—the great paper-money earthquake which shook 
the country from end to end. The farmers thought it bad enough 
to be bowed to earth by a crushing load of taxes and mortgages. It 
was worse to see the merchants and shippers rolling in prosperity, 
fattening upon the same circumstances which ruined the tillers. 
The latter had been growing more and more surly, and now, in 1785, 
they perceived the commercial class get its way in spite of all opposi¬ 
tion, and give Congress certain privileges which seemed certain to in¬ 
crease the cost of living. It was too much. 

In the fall of 1785, a few paper-money advocates had seats in the 
Assembly. During the February session of 1786, members of six 
towns brought instructions to the Legislature calling for an emission 
of bills. The merchants of Newport and Providence took alarm, and 
submitted remonstrances, arguing that there was no real scarcity of 
money, and that if the paper were printed, it would drive coin from 
circulation. A paper money law, they predicted, would ruin Rhode 
Island’s commerce with other States, which would not accept pay¬ 
ment for their goods in rag money. In March the Assembly voted 
on the question, and the country party lost, 43 to 18. However, 
because of the scarcity of currency, an act was passed—the Provi¬ 
dence remonstrants had themselves suggested it, and it was genuinely 
expedient—making real property and certain kinds of personal 
property a legal tender for debts on execution. This act of course 
gave the poor debtor only a shadowy protection. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 229 

The result was a spasmodic and startling successful movement at 
the polls for the defeat of the commercial and capitalist party. At 
the April election in 1786, to which mortgaged farmers went with 
the same feeling that they took to the polls in Kansas in 1896, 
Governor Greene and Deputy-Governor Jabez Bowen were over¬ 
thrown. Greene was a rich merchant, while Bowen had made him¬ 
self obnoxious to the country party when, two years before, he had 
quashed at the outset an attempt at resistance to the collection of 
the taxes. Two tried representatives of the country party, John 
Collins and Daniel Owen, were chosen to the Governorship and 
Deputy-Governorship, positions they were to hold four years each. 
No less than 45 new members appeared in a House of 70, and five 
new Assistants in a total of ten. Newport, Providence, and Bristol 
held firm, but the character of the Legislature was at one stroke de¬ 
graded and debased. “I never saw so great a proportion of ignorant 
men in a public body,” says one observer. “There are but four or 
five that appear to understand the nature of money and the operation 
of the law; and but a few of these can express their sentiments with 
propriety. You never heard language and common sense so tortured 
and murdered as in this House.” 33 

The victorious country party lost no time. On May 5, on the 
ground that the money in the State was “quite insufficient” and that 
the farmers were losing their all at forced sales, an act was initiated 
for emitting £100,000 in bills, to be loaned at interest on landed 
security. It passed by a large majority. Its worst features were 
the provisions forcing the circulation of the bills, and especially one 
which, if a creditor refused them, enabled any debtor to discharge his 
debt by depositing the required sum with the county-judge, who 
should give notice of the fact in the press. Depreciation of the paper 
was instant and swift. By the fifth of August, it was passing at four 
to one, and many honest men would have nothing to do with the 
“rags and blacking”; rogues and unprincipled debtors, however, 
hastened to fill their pockets with it to pay their obligations, and a 
neat brokerage business sprang up to assist them. 

During August the Assembly was called in special session to hit 
upon further measures for compelling the circulation of the paper. 
The law was amended to make any person who refused to accept the 
bills finable from £6 to £30 for a first offense, and from £10 to 

13 Newport letter to the N. H. Mercury, Oct. 25, 1787- 


230 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


£50 for a second; while to make it easier to deal with these offenders, 
they were deprived of trial by jury. The paper was also made a 
tender in payment of Continental taxes, an act which dishonored 
the State and called forth a protest in writing from the Newport, 
Providence, Warren, Bristol, and New Shoreham representatives. 
The activity of the debtors was extraordinary; one issue of the Provi¬ 
dence Gazette , that of September 23, contained twenty-seven adver¬ 
tisements giving public notification that as many men had lodged 
sufficient sums in paper with the authorities to cover what they 
owed. However, it soon became plain that the advocates of infla¬ 
tion and repudiation could not carry everything by force of law. A 
general stagnation of business set in. Shops in all towns shut their 
doors rather than sell their wares for paper; the good people of 
Connecticut and Massachusetts—particularly after it was learned 
that a boy driving over the line with a load of potatoes had been 
compelled by force to sell them for paper—refused to dispose of 
their livestock, grain, apples, and homely manufactured products in 
Rhode Island or through Rhode Island traders. Many merchants 
began to flee from the seaport towns to other parts of the Union 
as if a plague were behind them. And, most hopeful of all, the 
courts revolted. 34 

In September, 1786, a test case—the famous case of Trevett vs. 
Weeden—was carried to the Superior Court by a refractory Newport 
butcher, who was defended by General Varnum, and the members of 
that tribunal defied the Legislature by refusing to punish the culprit 
in any way, declaring that they lacked jurisdiction. A month later 
the House summoned the justices before it, and reprimanded them, 
but it could do nothing more, and the precedent stood. 

Opposition to the forcing-law insanity was by no means dead in 
the legislature, the larger towns standing firm. But the majority 
was not checked in the least by the arguments of the shippers, traders, 
and propertied men generally. The assembly lost the appearance of 
a deliberative body at its regular October session, for secret con¬ 
claves decided upon most measures and hurried them through without 
real debate. On Sundays and at night little juntas canvassed pro¬ 
posed bills, determined which should be enacted into law, and next 
day marshalled the rank and file to carry out the program. A com- 

84 See the Rhode Island correspondence of the N. Y. Daily Advertiser, especially in 
the issue of Sept. 14. R. I, Acts and Resolves, October, 1786, p. 6. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 231 

mittee actually drafted a statute to destroy the negotiability of notes, 
^nd under certain circumstances to outlaw them in six months, and 
eight men had the effrontery to vote for it. Early in October a secret 
caucus prepared a bill which its opponents promptly dubbed “the 
bloody act.” It required every citizen to take an oath to support 
the paper money as equal in value to cash, suspended every office¬ 
holder who should refuse the oath, denied permission to any non- 
juring shipmaster to load or unload his vessel, prohibiting non-juring 
lawyers from practicing, and disfranchised these men and all other 
non-jurors. This bill was sent to the towns to be submitted to the 
voters in town meeting for their instructions. It met almost no favor; 
Providence promptly called it “unconstitutional, unjust, impolitic”; 
and it was never passed. 

During 1787 the hold of the paper-money party seemed outwardly 
as strong as ever, though in reality it was weakening. The force 
acts, thanks to the Superior Court, were practically inoperative, and 
the injustices and distresses of the previous summer had produced 
their natural effect on the consciences of all good citizens. Still, 
however, paper sufficed to pay a debt. The ticket or “prox” of the 
country party at the spring election was headed by Collins and Owen, 
and bore the legend: “Liberty and Property secured by Persever¬ 
ance.” It was a balanced ticket, for while Owen was the leader of 
the faction in its most radical stronghold, Gloucester, Governor 
Collins held more moderate views, and wavering men might easily 
be attracted by him. The opposition “prox” bore the names of 
William Bradford for Governor and John Malbone for Deputy-Gover¬ 
nor. The former had been an early leader in the Revolution, having 
served on the Committee of Safety in 1775; while he represented also 
the new federalist movement, for he had succeeded Stephen Hopkins 
in Congress and believed in a closer national union. This was im¬ 
portant, for the country party and town party had just found a 
further theme of dispute in the recommendation of Congress that 
each State appoint delegates to a convention for revising the Articles 
of Confederation. By a large majority, the Legislature had declined 
to send delegates. As for Malbone, he was a member of one of the 
oldest mercantile houses in Newport, and represented the commercial 
interests. 35 

The acts of the recent paper-money sessions were subjected to a 

88 Bates, “Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union," 144-45. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


232 

raking fire. Their impolicy and injustice were alike clear. Business 
was now at a total standstill; the merchants and farmers alike had 
been struck a grievous blow. One wag said that the next money of 
the State would be rope, cut into fixed units, and that if a man 
depreciated it, it would first be used to whip and then hang him. 
The sound-money campaigners called attention to the public senti¬ 
ment of other States, disgusted by Rhode Island’s acts; “the quintes¬ 
sence of knavery,” a New York journal had termed the policy. They 
showed that while in part the paper money agitation had been 
founded upon real distress, in part its supporters had been rascals 
who had used the bills as easy way of paying debts; and that since 
the paper had depreciated, the tender clauses were sheer swindle- 
breeders. A moderate writer, who took the tactful name “A Farmer,” 
stated that he had at first advocated paper, but that the emission 
had been too large, and the supporting measures too harsh. 

Nevertheless, the sound money party failed. The vote in New¬ 
port, Providence, and Bristol strongly supported it. The first-named 
city, still the largest in the State, had a peculiar grudge to satisfy, 
for the paper money party, upon the petition of some of Newport’s 
irresponsible citizens, had revoked its charter; 36 and this despite the 
fact that these petitioners did not constitute one-fourth of the free¬ 
men, that their property was not assessed for one-seventeenth the 
city taxes, while from some of them no taxes at all could be collected, 
and that the city administration had been excellent. Moreover, the 
Newport postmaster had been dismissed on a trivial pretext. In 
their wrath the Newporters gave Malbone and Bradford 243 and 211 
votes respectively, and Owen and Collins only 63 and 83. 37 How¬ 
ever, the rural returns snowed under these city majorities. When 
both houses met at Newport on May 2, the correspondent of the 
Connecticut Magazine reported that matters had gone from bad to 
worse in the upper branch. “Those who had in many instances 
opposed, or dissented from the proceedings of the late administra¬ 
tion,” he said, “were superseded by the avowed partisans of their 
favorite system. In the lower house, the division was nearly as last 
year.” 38 The correspondent of the Massachusetts Centinel described 
the majority of the upper chamber as “a most curious medley of 
Know Ye justices, horse jockies, and so on.” Their prox, he added, 

88 Pa. Packet, April 5, 1787 (Newport dispatch dated March 22). 

87 N. Y. Advertiser, April 30, 1787. 

38 Conn. Mag., May 31, 1787. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 233 

had been headed by the word “perseverance,” an accurate motto if 
men added, “in villainy.” 39 

The government of the State under the new Legislature of 1787 
was of course not a whit improved. Repudiation was allowed to run 
its course. Payment of the State debt in paper was continued, and 
during the summer three-fourths of it was wiped off the books. The 
night before the Assembly organized, a program was blocked out by 
a caucus, made up of paper-money legislators and some private citi¬ 
zens, “as good friends to the cause as ever broke bread”; and a 
salient feature of the agreement reached was that no functionary 
should be reappointed who was not of the country party. The elec¬ 
torate had already punished the Superior Court, for virtually declar¬ 
ing the forcing act unconstitutional, by displacing the four subordin¬ 
ate justices and reelecting the Chief Justice alone. Newcomers, 
sometimes grossly unfit, always inexperienced, now replaced a num¬ 
ber of well-equipped officials. To crown its perversity, the Legisla¬ 
ture again declined to send delegates to attend the Constitutional 
Convention in Philadelphia: the upper house in May refusing to 
concur when the lower house passed the needed measure, and in 
June the lower house failing to consent to action by the upper. 

III. New England and the Federal Constitution 

At this point we may turn to the neighboring States for a moment. 
While Rhode Island under Governor Collins had been declining to 
cooperate in the Constitutional Convention, the majority of intelli¬ 
gent men elsewhere in New England had been looking expectantly 
toward Philadelphia. To understand the isolation of Rhode Island 
after 1787, we must take note of the attitude of Massachusetts under 
Hancock, New Hampshire under Langdon, and Connecticut under 
Huntington, toward the effort for a better national Constitution. 

Connecticut was everywhere expected to be one of the first 
States of the nation to ratify. This was in spite of the fact that a 
clear division of opinion on the question of federalism had arisen 
before Trumbull’s resignation, and had grown more prominent. 
Thus a political essayist wrote in the Connecticut Cowant of Novem¬ 
ber 20, 1786: 

There are two parties in the State, jealous of each other federal and anti-federal. 
The federal men suppose the anti-federal to be knaves, artful designing demagogues. 

89 Mass. Centinel, June 20, 1787; R. I. Records, X, 239 ff. 


234 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


The anti-federal suppose the federal to be ambitious tyrannical men who are aiming 
at power at the expense of the people at large. . . . The anti-federal think as they 
have been bred—their education has been rather indifferent—they have been accus¬ 
tomed to think on the small scale—they can think on no other without an enlargement 
of their minds. Besides, most of them live remote from the best opportunities of 
information, the knowledge they acquire is late, and is longer in producing conviction 
in their minds than in more enlarged minds. . . . Were the anti-federal men in this 
State to travel, to sit in Congress, to converse with men who understand foreign 
policy, in short, were they to view this State and the continent in their true con¬ 
nection with other nations, they would think like the federal men and join in their 
measures. The system of measures now pursuing by the majority of the Legislature 
would, if carried through, inevitably bring disgrace, poverty, and ruin upon this State 
—and at any rate would produce embarrassments innumerable. 

But as the paper-money agitation ruffled Connecticut politics but 
little, so this antagonism of federal and anti-federal men did not 
greatly disturb its placid surface. The Connecticut Magazine in 
June, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was well launched, 
took occasion to “congratulate our fellow citizens on that spirit of 
candor and unanimity, which has signalized the House of Representa¬ 
tives. No spirit of party or faction has appeared.” The people of 
Connecticut were often tight of pocketbook, sometimes provincial 
of mind, but on the whole they were too public-spirited not to ap¬ 
prove of an energetic national government even if it meant sacrifices. 

The State convention of January, 1788, spent only a few days in 
debate, and voted 128 to 40 for ratification. Among the opponents 
were a few who had sympathized with the Shays insurrection. These 
dissenters were strengthened by a number of Revolutionary officers, 
led by General James Wadsworth, who had sat in the Continental 
Congress, and who objected to giving Congress both the sword and 
the purse. The senior member of the Council, William Williams, at 
first was unfavorable because the instrument imposed no religious 
test, but gave over his objection. Two men who had helped write 
the Constitution, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman, spoke for it 
in the Convention with effect, and Gov. Huntington seconded them, 
taking pains to express his faith in the high motives of the opposi¬ 
tion. At the next State election the voters significantly left Wads¬ 
worth out of the government. 40 

Massachusetts sent four men to the Constitutional Convention— 
Elbridge Gerry, the trusty henchman of Samuel Adams; Rufus King, 
a young man; Nathaniel Gorham; and Caleb Strong, yet little known, 
but a hard-headed Puritan who was to be ten times Governor. Gerry 
sat in the Convention till it ended, and assisted it materially, but 

40 B. C. Steiner, “Connecticut’s Ratification,” Proceedings Amer. Antiq. Soc. t 
April, 1915. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 235 

refused to sign the Constitution. When he returned home to oppose 
ratification, it was plain the fight would be intense. As Knox wrote 
Washington after study of the situation in the final months of 1787, 41 
three parties might be distinguished. One, the weightiest, included 
all engaged in commerce, all men of large property, the clergy, the 
lawyers, and the officers of the Revolution; it represented three- 
sevenths of the population, and was emphatically for ratification. 
Another was composed of the people of the district of Maine, nearly 
two-sevenths of the population, who would be for or against the 
Constitution as it promised to impede or help their plans for a new 
State chiefly against it. A third party consisted of the recent in¬ 
surgents and their friends, some of whom wished to see public and 
private debts abolished or reduced, and all of whom opposed ratifi¬ 
cation. The great question was, what would be the position of 
Governor Hancock and Samuel Adams? No one knew, but it was 
suspected that, opposed though the two men were in politics, at heart 
they agreed in disliking the Constitution. 

The State convention opened upon January 9, 1788, in Boston, 
and numbered many of the most distinguished men of Massachusetts. 
Governor Hancock, richly dressed, his position unknown, presided. 
On the floor were his lofty, reserved rival, the federalist Bowdoin; 
the leader of the Boston commonalty, Samuel Adams, who was hesi¬ 
tant; two Revolutionary generals, Heath and Lincoln; three of the 
delegates to Philadelphia, Gorham, Strong, and King; and several 
young men of note, as Fisher Ames, Theophilus Parsons, and Theo¬ 
dore Sedgwick—all three federalists and conservatives. The evi¬ 
dence is that at the outset a majority of the 360 members were ready 
to vote against the Constitution. James Madison wrote Washing¬ 
ton from New York on January 20 that “the intelligence from 
Massachusetts begins to be very ominous to the Constitution.” But 
the indispensable foundation for ratification was laid by searching 
debate upon one provision of the Constitution after another. 

A great success was scored when Samuel Adams, after listening in 
silence to the discussion for a fortnight, was brought over—in part 
by an enthusiastic mass-meeting of Boston mechanics—to the advo¬ 
cacy of the “new roof.” The important question of Governor Han¬ 
cock’s position remained, and he, when the moment for answering it 
came, was suddenly confined to bed by his painful but indispensable 

41 Drake, Knox, 97-8. 


236 THE AMERICAN STATES 

gout. Some ardent supporters of the Constitution did not reflect that 
Hancock’s political future depended on whether his decision was 
shrewd, but Hancock never forgot it. How would his answer affect 
the April election for Governor? Was he to bring his personal fol¬ 
lowing into support of a new national government, or to lead an 
irreconcilable State Rights party? The friends of the instrument 
helped him decide. A deputation sought his home, induced him to 
reappear as an advocate of compromise—that is, of ratification with 
a request for changes—and furnished him nine proposed amendments 
called the “conciliatory proposition,” written by Theophilus Parsons. 
One inducement offered by the Federalists was a promise of support 
for the Governorship, even from Bowdoin’s friends. Another, as 
Rufus King told Knox, was the prospect that if Virginia did not 
enter the Union, Hancock might become the first President of the 
United States. The effect of Hancock’s advocacy of ratification was 
all that was expected, and the Constitution was accepted (February 
6) by a majority of less than twenty—187 to 168. 

Besides Rhode Island, New Hampshire remained to ratify. The 
issue arose there simultaneously with the annual election, and the 
attitude of the rival candidates, Sullivan and President Langdon, 
was of interest. Sullivan was firmly federalist. He was quoted in 
January as saying “that although he did not doubt New Hampshire, 
singly considered, might have found a better Constitution for them¬ 
selves, yet when the whole of the thirteen States were considered; 
that it was to unite them, jarring in interests, in politics and preju¬ 
dices, he was bold to say, it was one of the best systems of govern¬ 
ment ever devised; and all the objections which have been raised 
against it are no more than what might be brought against any form 
of government whatever.” 42 When he made this emphatic declara¬ 
tion, the State Convention to debate the Constitution had not met, 
and when it did meet in February, it adjourned till June, 1788, to 
see how the other States would act. President Langdon, who had 
been one of the two delegates to Philadelphia (Nicholas Gilman the 
other), was also rated a supporter of the Constitution. But his 
opinions gave a larger place to State Rights—a dozen years later he 
had become an ardent Jeffersonian—and men suspicious of the Fed¬ 
eral instrument would be more likely to vote for him. The elections 
were held in March, and an unusual number attended the polls. 

42 Portsmouth dispatch in Pa. Journal, Jan. 2, 1788. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 237 


Concord went overwhelmingly for Langdon. He was soon known to 
have an overwhelming plurality, but it was long doubtful whether 
he would attain a majority. Finally, at a late date in June, the 
Legislature ascertained that Langdon had received 4421 votes, Sul¬ 
livan 3664, and scattering candidates 753. 43 If three men had 
changed their votes against Langdon, the election would have gone 
to the Legislature. 

Before the news that Langdon was again President had reached 
Philadelphia and Richmond, the question of ratification also had 
been decided. The Convention met on June 17, and finding that 
eight States had acceded to the Constitution, it could hardly hesitate 
longer. After four days of debate, approval was voted by a small 
majority. 

Meanwhile, the outlook for ratification in Rhode Island seemed 
hopeless. It was true that the meeting of the Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, and the failure of the Legislature to send delegates, were 
the means of showing again that the commercial leaders were almost 
unanimously for a stronger Union. They asserted their federalism 
in the press. General Varnum sent a letter to the Constitutional 
Convention in which he declared that the measures of the Legisla¬ 
ture grossly misrepresented the State: 

They are equally reprobated and abhorred by gentlemen of the learned professions, 
by the whole mercantile body, and by most of the respectable farmers and mechanics. 
The majority of the administration is composed of a licentious number of men, desti¬ 
tute of education, and many of them void of principle. From anarchy and confusion 
they derive their temporary consequence; and this they endeavor to prolong by 
debauching the minds of the common people, whose attention is wholly devoted to 
the abolition of debts, public and private. With them are associated the disaffected 
of every description, particularly those who were unfriendly during the war. Their 
paper-money system, founded on oppression and fraud, they are determined to sup¬ 
port at every hazard and . . . they trample upon the most sacred obligations. 44 


The commercial and professional groups owned most of the State’s 
wealth, but their antagonists were far too numerous for them. There 
was no ground for optimism in Varnum’s statement. Rhode Island 
was reaping the harvest inevitable from her lack of schools, the dis¬ 
tinct cleavage between her small body of educated townspeople and 
her large body of ignorant laborers and farmers, and her failure to 
nip the paper money folly in the bud. Madison in distant Virginia 
perceived that she would offer one of the stubbornest obstacles to 
complete acceptance of the Constitution. 


43 Pa. Journal, July 

44 Text in Updike, 
Union.” 


2, 1788; N. Y. Journal, June 26. . , 

“R. I. Bar,” 300; Cf. Bates, ‘‘R. I. and the Formation of the 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


238 

With brave promptness the friends of the Constitution, who were 
also the sound-money followers of Bradford and Varnum, began a 
newspaper battle for it. When the Legislature met in October, 1787, 
the debate was led for them by representatives of the chief towns— 
Marchant and Champlin of Newport, Arnold and Bowen of Provi¬ 
dence, and Bradford of Bristol; while the chief opposition speakers 
were from rural districts like Joslin, Charlestown, and East Green¬ 
wich. The anti-federalists saw that they could best prevent ratifica¬ 
tion by preventing a special Convention, for as they said, in a Con¬ 
vention the artful lawyers might talk over the opponents. Their 
plan was to arrange for a direct vote upon the Constitution in the 
towns, and after some delay they carried it, 43 to 15 in the lower 
house. The day set for this referendum was March 24, 1788. In¬ 
dignant that discussion by thoughtful leaders and a deliberate deci¬ 
sion by them had thus been frustrated, the federalists showed their 
resentment by staying away from the polls. In Providence not one 
vote was cast for the Constitution, and in Newport only one; in the 
whole State the result was 2708 against and 237 for, though fully 
6000 men were eligible to vote. This month, it may be noted, the 
State finished the “payment” of its debt in its depreciated paper, 
and thus lightened the tax burden. 45 

For two years after the disastrous referendum the “country party” 
maintained its bitter resistance to the Constitution; for eighteen 
months it maintained its refusal to modify the iniquitous paper- 
money measures. During the spring and summer of 1788 the news 
of the last needed ratifications came in, till finally only North Caro¬ 
lina and Rhode Island were hesitating. Yet the autumn session of 
the Legislature failed to call a Convention, and in December a re¬ 
newed effort for one failed. In March, 1789, when the Federal 
Government went into operation, still another attempt proved fruit¬ 
less. Worst of all, when the elections for the Legislature were held 
that spring, it was found that the country party had again decisively 
triumphed, though the federalists had gained strength. In their jubi¬ 
lation the majority took an insolent step. Since no one knew when 
in old Colonial days, it had been the immemorial privilege of the 
Assemblymen for each town to nominate the justices of the peace for 
their own community. Now a country member proposed a list of 
“country party” justices for Providence, and the Providence repre- 

48 Bates, 164. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 239 

sentatives had to sit in helpless rage and see it approved; while an¬ 
other country member played the same trick upon Newport. 46 

But when the regular fall meeting of the Legislature came, the 
country party exhibited less confidence. Even North Carolina was 
now on the point of ratifying the Constitution, and did ratify in 
November. Little Rhode Island was out in the cold, an object of 
scorn to her neighbors, and her people began to feel the position a 
bleak one. Thirty towns and a few hundred square miles were too 
small a territory to set up as an independent nation. As for the 
paper money, the bills had long since begun passing at twelve to one, 
and it was useless to affirm that business could be done upon any 
other basis. 47 Dishonest debtors were still dogging and cheating a 
few creditors, and the scandal of this legalized robbery was plain to 
the very children. The adjoining States had with Puritan anger 
placed the Rhode Islanders, as regarded the collection of debts 
within their borders, in the position of outlaws. A pirate had as 
much chance of getting a sum of money through the Hartford courts 
as a merchant of Newport. The Legislature in September so far 
recognized the hard facts of the financial situation as to sus¬ 
pend the tender act, saving a last handful of men of property from 
the clutches of debtors. At the next session it repealed the tender 
legislation, and recognized fifteen to one as the scale of deprecia¬ 
tion (October, 1789). 48 These steps led up to an equally important 
move affecting the Constitution: in January, 1790, a bill summoning 
a Convention passed, though only after Governor Collins’s interven¬ 
tion in its behalf. It came to nothing, for the Convention failed to 
ratify, but it showed that the tide had turned. 

With the surrender of the country party to the inevitable now near, 
the election of the spring of 1790 was a curiously mixed affair. For 
three years the two factions had hated each other intensely, but the 
hatred had burnt itself out, and from the isolation of the State was 
born a sense of the need for compromise and peace. Disgusted with 
Governor Collins because he had supported the Convention, the anti¬ 
federalists tried first to nominate Deputy-Governor Owen instead, 

48 Newport correspondence in N. Y. Advertiser, May 20, 1789. 

47 So the town meeting of Providence had said in its spring instructions to its 
legislator which declared: “Viewing as we do a further continuance of the law, 
making the paper bills a tender in payment of specie contracts at par, in the form 
and manner as now established, to be abominably wicked and unjust, we do again 
instruct you, as we have done repeatedly before, to exert your influence ... to 
obtain a repeal or alteration. . . .” S. Ca. Gazette, April 29, 1789. 

48 Providence Gazette, Oct. 24, 1789. 


240 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


and when Owen refused, took Arthur Fenner of Providence, a scion 
of one of the most respected families in New England. Fenner was 
regarded as hostile to the Constitution, but very mildly so, and some 
even believed him a lukewarm friend to ratification. The federalists, 
who held their nominating convention on the same day, named the 
same two men to head their ticket, but offered candidates of their 
own for the attorney-generalship and a half-dozen assistantships. 
This ticket they called the “Coalition or Federal Prox.” The anti¬ 
federalists were generally successful, electing their special candidates, 
but the maneuver of the federalists in endorsing Fenner greatly 
lessened the strife of the two parties. In May, immediately after 
the election, another Convention voted to ratify the Constitution, 
by the narrow majority of two. 

IV. New England Politics After 1788 

The year 1789 found the political currents in all New England 
profoundly affected not only by the new Federal Government but 
by the marked prosperity which set in after 1787. Below the sur¬ 
face, the foundations for this prosperity were being laid even in the 
black years 1785-6. The ravages of the war were then being steadily 
repaired, debts were being liquidated, the American marine was re¬ 
gaining the seas, and markets were being found for American prod¬ 
ucts. Everywhere in New England this economic rebound assisted 
the federalist sentiment, for federalism found its chief strength among 
the prosperous classes. In Connecticut, Governor Huntington con¬ 
tinued until 1796 to preside over a population which was from the 
first patriotically eager to support the Constitution. One citizen 
wrote after ratification that he would never vote for any candidate 
who had opposed it, “for they fight against God.” Many of the 
objections to the Constitution had been ridiculous, and Simeon 
Baldwin, a lawyer of New Haven, satirized them by suggesting as 
fit amendments that the fees of all officers, including doorkeepers of 
Congress, should be regulated by those of the State officers of Con¬ 
necticut, and that Congress should be required to reject all petitions 
for Revolutionary pensions without reading them. 

In New Hampshire the strongest public men were drawn into 
Federal office, the long rivalry of Langdon and Sullivan for the 
chief magistracy thus being ended. In the fall of 1788 Langdon 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 241 


was elected Senator by the Legislature, and in the following spring 
he resigned the Presidency of the State to take his place in Con¬ 
gress. For the year 1789 Sullivan had a clear field for the Presi¬ 
dency, distancing a few such opponents as John Pickering. But he 
also soon accepted Federal office—a district judgeship—and gave 
place to Josiah Bartlett, a federalist who was not only chosen Presi¬ 
dent year after year, but was elected the first Governor under the 
new Constitution of 1794. 

In Massachusetts, narrow as had been the margin between victory 
and defeat for the Constitution, the federalists at once and rapidly 
grew in strength. The eastern section, with its large population 
devoted to commerce, was in the main thoroughly federalist in feel¬ 
ing, while in the west, now more prosperous, a reaction against the 
Shays folly was evident. Elbridge Gerry, by nature and education 
a hater of federalism, and one of the Northern leaders in the fight 
against the Constitution, was embittered by this growing sentiment. 
He wrote a friend in 1788: “The vigilant enemies of free government 
have been long in the execution of their plans to hunt down all who 
remain attached to Revolution principles. They have attacked us 
in detail, and have deprived . . . Mr. S. Adams and myself, in a 
great measure, of that public confidence to which a faithful attach¬ 
ment to the public interest entitles us; and they are now aiming to 
throw Mr. Hancock out of the saddle, who, with all his foibles, is 
yet attached to the Whig cause.” He complained that the federal¬ 
ists were trying to identify themselves with the brains and property 
of Massachusetts, and to create an impression that any anti-federal¬ 
ist was of the rabble poor, and forfeited “all title to the respect of 
a gentleman.” He was right as to the concerted attack upon Han¬ 
cock for his instinctive adherence to the anti-federalist side, but 
wrong if he feared that the gouty leader could be easily displaced. 
Hancock, while accepting the Constitution, did not wish the State 
government which he headed to be more eclipsed by the power and 
glory of the Federal Government than was unavoidable. He was 
still a thorough democrat in principles. But Massachusetts voters 
saw no reason why their Governor had to be a strict federalist; they 
applauded his plans for economy in State affairs and his long record 
of service even while they grew in liking for the new national system. 

In the election of 1788 the two chief State parties united in sup¬ 
porting Hancock, who received an overwhelming vote—17,841 bal- 


242 THE AMERICAN STATES 

lots in a total of 22,157. 49 In considerable part it was a “delivered” 
vote. Everyone knew that the federalist and conservative leaders, 
in return for Hancock’s support in the ratifying convention, had 
intimated their willingness to sustain him for the Governorship and 
later for high Federal office. 50 But the two parties did hotly contest 
the Lieutenant-Governorship. Cushing, who was awaiting his ninth 
reelection, had just died. The federalist vote was divided between 
two patriots who had never been decently rewarded for their serv¬ 
ices to America—Samuel Adams, who had fired New England to 
fighting temper, and Benjamin Lincoln, who had fought a hopeless 
fight at Charleston, taken Cornwallis’s sword at Yorktown, and sup¬ 
pressed Shays’s Rebellion. Most anti-federalists supported James 
Warren, whose Revolutionary record had been much more modest. 
No one received a majority, though Lincoln came very near doing 
so, with Adams in second place. The House sent the names of 
these two ageing leaders to the Senate, which elected Lincoln. Both 
chambers were now warmly federalist, and the choice pleased the 
State. 51 

The election of 1789 was more spirited. Bowdoin again entered 
the lists against Hancock, and Stephen Higginson, his old Achilles, 
made the Centinel ring with attacks upon the Governor. He recalled 
how Hancock’s wealth rather than his native ability had first lifted 
him to prominence. He taunted him with having been unduly slow 
to embrace the patriot cause against the Crown. He revived the old 
charge: “At one period, and that a distressed one, too, nothing was 
heard of from Mr. Hancock but balls, routs, and all the various 
fascinating pleasures of European courts.” 52 Hancock’s inatten¬ 
tion to State business, he asserted, had doubled the length of the 
legislative sessions in his first five years, thus costing the State 
£10,000 or more. His correspondence with other Governors and 
Congress had been so slender that the Legislature knew more about 
British than American affairs in that period; while his appointments 

49 Result given in Mass. Centinel, April 4, 1789. 

60 In November, 1788, the two chambers in Massachusetts quarreled violently over 
the choice of a United States Senator to be colleague to Caleb Strong. The House 
wanted to name Dr. Charles Jarvis; the Senate wished to select either Azor Orne, 
or Tristram Dalton. By persistence the Senate carried its point, and Dalton became 
Senator. Boston dispatch to Pa. Journal, Dec. 10, 1788. 

61 For the peculiar Yankee quarrel over a question of salary—whether the Lieutenani- 

Governor should continue to hold the command of the Castle, in Boston Harbor a 
well-paid sinecure—see Amory’s “Sullivan,” I, 242 ff.: Independent Chronicle, Jan. 15, 
1789. Hancock wanted it abolished, and thus incurred the increased hostility ot 
Lincoln s friends. ] 

62 Mass. Centinel, Feb. 25, 1789; see also Feb. 18, Feb. 28, March 4, etc. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND 243 


had been made for political reasons only. “Laco” also charged that 
the Governor’s resignation in 1785 had been a maneuver to restore 
his waning popularity, and that he had hoped to “make a merit of 
continuing in office.” Finally, he accused Hancock of selling his 
support of the Constitution in 1788 to the highest bidders. The 
Governor’s friends, called the Club of the Stone House, shared in 
the abuse directed against him. 

But such attacks were ably answered by James Sullivan and 
others; and the election was humiliating to Bowdoin. In Boston he 
had 569 votes against 1265 for Hancock, and in the State as a whole 
he received only 3457 votes, or about half the total given him in 
1787. 53 With Bowdoin, Lieutenant-Governor Lincoln also went 
down in defeat. A notable feature of the preliminaries to the cam¬ 
paign had been the full reconciliation of Hancock with Samuel 
Adams, who was now made Lieutenant-Governor in Lincoln’s place. 
The two old patriots had begun meeting each other on a cordial 
social footing again in 1787, when they finally stood together in 
accepting the Constitution with reservations; and they steadily 
drifted together politically. The public was for the most part de¬ 
lighted in seeing the names of the leaders of the Revolution in Massa¬ 
chusetts joined on one ticket. Lincoln had been so popular that the 
Federalists had entertained a firm expectation of his election, and 
his failure to run well was a severe blow. In Boston he received only 
617 votes against 1219 for Adams. 

Thereafter Hancock was reelected Governor annually, without any 
real opposition, till his death. In 1790 Bowdoin withdrew from the 
canvass, and was given but 1884 votes. Along with Hancock, Sam¬ 
uel Adams was four times reelected Lieutenant-Governor, and when 
Hancock died on October 8, 1793, Adams succeeded him. Stately, 
vain, Hancock in these last years had been called a handsome figure¬ 
head for the ship of state,” and his failing health, though he was 
younger than Washington, made it impossible for him to show much 
executive energy. He had been keenly disappointed in his ambi¬ 
tion for higher office, having failed in the first Presidential election 


53 There was no disorder. The Boston dispatch to the Pa. Packet, April 21, 1789, 
said: “If the public papers proclaimed ruthless and implacable hostility in the course 
of our late electioneering speculations, we have the more reason to congratulate the 
friends of America on the exemplary good humor which appeared on the floor of the 
(Faneuil) hall, in the moment of the contest. Scarcely an angry word was heard, 
and the victor and the vanquished have each their title to. the warmest encomiums; 
the former, for suppressing every emotion which could indicate the insolence of 
success; and the latter, for the manly patience with which they have borne their di 9 - 
appointment.” See also Amer. Museum, V, 4 I 5 - 


244 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


to obtain a single vote for even the Vice-Presidency, and both he 
and Samuel Adams took much pleasure in an attitude of stem loy¬ 
alty to State sovereignty. There was a considerable popular ac¬ 
quiescence in this, for of all the States Massachusetts had most 
developed and was most proud of efficient local and State govern¬ 
ment. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE MIDDLE STATES 

An interesting parallel can be traced between political events in 
New York and in Pennsylvania from 1776 to 1790. It is true that 
in New York there existed general unanimity on constitutional ques¬ 
tions, and there was only one Governor; while Pennsylvanians quar¬ 
reled constantly over their Constitution and in this period had 
a half dozen Presidents. But in both States all political differences 
had for a time to be sunk to deal with British invaders. In both 
occurred a deplorably extreme vendetta against loyalists and neu¬ 
trals. This bitter persecution began in Pennsylvania as soon as the 
chief city was evacuated in 1778, and in New York reached its height 
soon after the British took ship from the chief city in 1783. The 
reaction also occurred first in Pennsylvania, where Dickinson, with 
other mild leaders, gained control of the State in the fall of 1782. 
It was not till the beginning of 1784 in New York that the cham¬ 
pion of moderation, Hamilton, fully opened his campaign. In both 
States the party chiefly responsible for Tory-baiting, the Constitu¬ 
tionalists in Pennsylvania and the Clintonians in New York, fur¬ 
nished most of the recruits for the party which opposed strengthen¬ 
ing the government of the Confederation. In both, the fight for a 
stronger union had been well begun by 1785. 

I. The Active War Period in New York 

The roster of New York’s second Provincial Congress, which was 
driven from town to town by the British advance during the summer 
and fall of 1775, includes all but a few of the names prominent in 
State politics for the next twenty years. Mention has been made of 
John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert R. Livingston, the youth¬ 
ful trio who wrote almost all the Constitution. There was also 
George Clinton, who nearly a decade before had begun to champion 
the patriot cause in the Assembly, and had lately gone to the Con¬ 
tinental Congress. John Morin Scott, aristocrat and radical, had 

245 


246 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


come up from his mansion on the outskirts of New York city. There 
was Philip Schuyler, representative of a patrician Dutch family 
which owned enormous tracts near Albany, who for his varied ex¬ 
perience in the Seven Years’ War had been named one of the four 
Continental major-generals, and who would have led the expedition 
against Quebec had he not been crippled by the gout. Three repre¬ 
sentatives each of the wealthy Yates and Van Cortland families were 
present, the most prominent of the former being Robert Yates, an 
esteemed Albany lawyer. William Duer, a young man who had been 
on the Committee of Safety, hailed—like Clinton—from the newer 
regions of the State. He had been in India; he had helped Clive 
defeat Dupleix, and now drew his sword with men who had helped 
Wolfe defeat Montcalm. A few men only do we miss. Hamilton 
was not there, but at the head of the artillery company he had or¬ 
ganized; Aaron Burr, with his usual impetuosity, had tossed aside 
his lawbooks at Litchfield, Conn., to share the attack upon Quebec; 
Robert Troup, one of Jay’s proteges, was a lieutenant in the army; 
and Egbert Benson had not yet become prominent. 

Hot political contests began early in New York, and from the first 
struggle sprang the man who was to hold the leadership in State 
affairs during his generation. George Clinton is so bold and pic¬ 
turesque a figure that it is strange the fame of his nephew De Witt 
Clinton has overshadowed him. A descendant of a gentle English 
family, whose head had abandoned his estates in a flight to Ireland 
when the Puritans defeated the Cavaliers, and which had later 
migrated to America, he had been born in the up-Colony hamlet of 
Little Britain. Study was interrupted by the Seven Years’ War, 
and at sixteen he served aboard a privateer at sea. Finding a sailor’s 
life distasteful, he joined his father’s regiment, and at eighteen fought 
as a lieutenant in the expedition which took Fort Frontenac. In his 
later twenties, having been admitted to the bar and found a practice 
in Ulster County, he was sent to the Assembly, and seized the 
opportunity to lead the minority opposition to British aggression. 
Without the profound intellect of Jay, without the family dignity of 
Gouverneur Morris, without the riches of John Morin Scott or the 
magnetism of Hamilton, he had qualities of daring, decision, and 
imperiousness which made him an irresistible political leader. 1 

1 Gouverneur Morris, ‘‘Oration in Honor of George Clinton/’ 1812: Prime’s “Clin¬ 
ton , Clinton Papers, Vol. I. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 247 

Clinton’s very vices were those of a born party general. He was 
occasionally rash. He had a tendency to domineer—his political 
enemy, Hamilton, truly said that he was distinguished for his firm¬ 
ness of will, and that it sometimes became sheer obstinacy. 2 His 
self interest sometimes swayed him from the path of strict rectitude; 
Hamilton again truly remarked that from his earliest years he had 
borne a reputation for artfulness and cunning. He had the virtues 
of quick generosity and engaging human kindliness, mingling readily 
with cartmen and farmers, rich merchants, or cultivated profes¬ 
sional men, and turning a warm side to the most diverse characters. 
Not an eloquent speaker, he still had a fluent and ingratiating tongue. 
In short, he could create popularity, hold it, and use it dexterously. 
His career was built largely upon the sterling record he made as a 
patriot in the early Revolutionary days. He fought hard, made his 
subordinates fight hard, and was exceedingly harsh to cowards, 
failures, and Tories. Men gave him greater credit than Schuyler for 
the self-assertion of the patriot group in the Legislature in 1770-75; 
and he was so energetic that at one time in 1776 he was in the Con¬ 
tinental Congress, the Provincial Congress, and head of a brigade. 

Immediately after the adjournment of the Constitutional Conven¬ 
tion in May, 1777, the Council of Safety ordered the election of 
State officers. The prominence of Clinton and Schuyler in the 
patriot agitation, and their military rank, made them the inevitable 
candidates for Governor. Some, however, thought that the service 
and ability of Jay should, despite his excessive modesty, be rewarded 
with the Governorship, and some declared for John Morin Scott. 
Scott’s ability as a lawyer was unquestioned; both John Adams and 
the Tory historian Jones state that he was an unusually ready speaker 
and a jovial, attractive man in company; and he had made heavy 
sacrifices for the cause. In New York city he was respected by both 
his brother aristocrats and the people at large, but he was little known 
elsewhere, and could not have been elected. As for Jay, he pro¬ 
tested that he did not want the office, and asked his supporters to 
vote for Schuyler for Governor and Clinton as Lieutenant-Governor. 
There was a distinct feeling among men of wealth and family that 
“Clinton’s family and connections do not entitle him to so distin¬ 
guished a preeminence,” as Schuyler—whose own relationship with 

3 Hamilton’s “Works,” I, 539 ff. Hamilton praised the administration of Clinton 
during the war, with some reservations, but says that after the war it was negative 
or mischievous. 


248 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the Van Rensselaers, Van Cortlandts, and other Dutch landed gen¬ 
try gave him an advantage—wrote when the election was over. Even 
some men who had not a trace of snobbery shared this belief. Four 
or five families, one of the Livingstons tells us, could almost control 
the wealth of the State, and it was thought politic to conciliate the 
class to which they belonged. But Clinton, as Schuyler admitted, 
“played his cards better than was expected.” ? Few men could speak 
to him without liking him for his open, energetic, democratic ways, 
while few could know Schuyler without deploring a certain brusque¬ 
ness and arrogance in that worthy general. 

In those perilous times there could be no thought of electioneering. 
Clinton was charged with the defence of the lower Hudson, and from 
his Highland strongholds was watching Sir Henry Clinton’s British 
forces like an eagle; Schuyler was in the north, preparing to meet 
Burgoyne. The two hostile armies threatened to crush New York 
State as in a vice. The general expectation was that Schuyler would 
win the election, and for years it was declared that Clinton obtained 
his victory only because the ballots of the militia under his immedi¬ 
ate command and influence turned the scale in his favor. At any 
rate, when the Council of Safety counted the votes, it was found 
that Clinton had been elected both Governor and Lieutenant-Gov¬ 
ernor by a considerable plurality, Orange County and other southern 
districts not yet in British hands having gone heavily for him. Jay’s 
disappointment was keen, but Schuyler admitted that the new Gov¬ 
ernor was able, brave, and patriotic, and Washington wrote the State 
authorities that the choice ^as excellent. 

Clinton was inaugurated at Kingston on July 30, 1777, in his 
Continental uniform, standing atop the barrel from which the State 
Constitution had been promulgated three months previous. Within 
two months thereafter, Sir Henry Clinton had pushed up the Hud¬ 
son, stormed or flanked the Highland posts, and putting Governor 
Clinton and the Legislature to flight, had burned Kingston to ashes. 

This was an augury of the immediate future difficulties of the 
State government. Till after Burgoyne’s surrender, Clinton’s duties 
were almost exclusively military, and they continued to be largely 
so throughout the Revolution. He acted as commander-in-chief of 
the militia, with the rank of brigadier-general, and held the same rank 


8 P. R. Livingston, “Debates of the N. Y. Const. Conv. of 1821” 
and Gerould ed.), 198; Jay, “Corr. and Public Papers,” I, 144. 


(Carter, Stone 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 249 


in the Continental army; he executed the defensive and offensive 
measures approved by the Legislature; and he took charge of the 
State’s policy towards the loyalists, who were more openly hostile 
in New York than elsewhere in the North. In October, 1777, he 
fought at Fort Montgomery until to escape he had to leap down 
precipitous rocks. In 1780 he commanded the forces sent to check 
Sir John Johnson, the Tories, and the Indians in the Mohawk Val¬ 
ley, and made a successful stand. During the three years 1777-79 
there was only one party in the State, and Clinton, fighting it as he 
would fight a frigate, commanded its unanimous confidence and 
support. Hamilton admitted later that “Mr. Clinton’s zeal and 
activity in forwarding the Revolution were unquestionably conspicu¬ 
ous.” But the circumstances of the time, with New York city in the 
grip of the British, and the constant possibility that he would have 
to take his militia into the field, forced him to share governmental 
responsibilities with others. Egbert Benson, who had studied law 
under John Morin Scott, became Attorney-General in 1777, and was 
Clinton’s most prominent adviser. 4 


II. The Active War Period in Pennsylvania 

In unhappy contrast with the initial harmony in New York was 
the party turmoil which rent Pennsylvania. We have seen how the 
first threat of British invasion could not force an artificial unity, and 
how the stern demand of the Continental Congress finally sent one 
faction, the opponents of the Franklin-Cannon-Bryan Constitution, 
sulking into retirement. Dickinson, its principal leader, had been 
defeated in national politics by John Adams, whom he hated; he 
had been defeated in State politics by Matlack and Roberdeau, 
whom he despised. He had been humiliated when he turned to mili¬ 
tary ambitions; for while jhe was at the head of his regiment in 
New Jersey in the summer of 1776, and as colonel of the first bat¬ 
talion was the ranking officer of all the Pennsylvania militia, his 
enemies had nominated two brigadier generals over his head. But 
Dickinson’s bitterness when he saw the new State government be¬ 
come operative early in March, 1 777 > was as nothing beside that of 
many conservatives—the wealthy merchants of Philadelphia, the 

* The introduction to Egbert Benson’s “Vindication of the Captors of Major Andre” 
states that while in the Assembly, Benson “drafted almost every important bill that 
passed it; and Hamilton (“Works” I, 545 ) gives him equal credit Benson’s politi¬ 
cal path parted from Clinton’s, and he warmly supported the Constitution. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


250 

great landholders in adjoining counties, the thousands everywhere in 
the southeastern part of the State with a deep sentimental attach¬ 
ment to the ancient order. 5 In no other large State did the British 
invasion find so many friendly or neutral inhabitants, and many 
dated their Toryism from the moment the radicals slew the Charter. 

The selection of Wharton as the first President of Pennsylvania 
was a tactful step. A man of moderate views, he would be more 
acceptable to the disgruntled Quakers and Episcopalians than Reed 
or Mifflin, whose abilities were greater; a member of a wealthy 
Philadelphia family, he carried reassurance that “levelling” had not 
triumphed everywhere. He had helped draft the Constitution, but 
he frankly acknowledged its defects. “There are many faults which 
I hope one day to see removed,” he wrote St. Clair, “but it is true 
that if the government should at this time be overset, it would be 
attended with the worst consequences.” . . . This spirit, this eager¬ 
ness for harmony, pervaded his whole Administration, and he spent 
much effort in trying to restrain precipitate Assemblymen. 6 Re¬ 
straint was much needed. The richest, most powerful State in the 
Union, Pennsylvania should have been the leading commonwealth 
in prosecuting the war; but in spite of Wharton and Reed, in spite 
of the spasm produced by the British irruption, internal quarrels 
palsied her strength. It was the radical measures of the Legislature 
which did most to keep old animosities alive and growing. The radi¬ 
cals were naturally irritated when they saw many prominent men, 
like Galloway, Chew, and William Allen,, go over to the British, and 
a great part of the population of Philadelphia insist on a timid neu¬ 
trality; nevertheless, they should hav$ acted more moderately. 

Throughout the spring and summer olf 1777, debate upon the 
revision of the Constitution continued with acrimony, a minority in 
the Assembly attacking the instrument, a majority defending it. 7 
Public antagonisms had been increased by the Test Act, which made 
anyone who refused to take an oath or affirmation of allegiance to 

5 See John Adams, “Works,” III, 44, 45, for the anger of the Pennsylvania con¬ 
servatives at him. “Millions of curses were poured out upon me for these exer¬ 
tions. . . .” Duer wrote R. R. Livingston from Philadelphia in May, 1777, that 
“a languor of the most alarming nature prevails in this city and State—principally 
(from what I can judge) to be imputed to the dispute about their government.” He 
added that Philadelphia had attracted the disaffected and the monopolisers of all tne 
States. Livingston MSS., New York Public Library. 

8 See Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., VI, 91 ff., for a sketch of Thos. Wharton, Jr., 
by Anne H. Wharton. Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council, XI, passim. 

7 “The party who believe the government to be a good one is too inconsiderable to 
be noticed,” says a pamphlet of 1777, “Observations on the Present Government of 
Pennsylvania.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 251 

the new government incapable of holding office or voting. The mere 
form of the oath was repugnant to Quakers and to some German 
religious sects. Many believed it was just a barefaced attempt to 
keep a large part of the intelligent, wealthy population away from 
the polls, and a number of Wharton’s friends warned him of the pub¬ 
lic wrath with which it was received. A York correspondent wrote 
Bryan soon after its passage that it had weakened the patriot cause: 
“Not one fourth part of the inhabitants hath, or will take it.” 8 
Where effective—for in some places it was not—the law threw all 
oath-takers into one dominant group, and into another and hostile 
body all the non-jurors, splitting the community in two. Another 
law, passed in June, 1777, sprang from the view that the inflow of 
refugee Tories from other States had reached alarming proportions, 
and that safeguards must be erected against the spread of discontent 
and disloyalty. The safeguard adopted worked a keen hardship upon 
non-jurors, for any adult travelling outside his own county or city 
without a certificate had to take the oath or go to jail. 9 

For the central purpose of such enactments a certain plea of ne¬ 
cessity could be made. Throughout 1777 the military outlook was 
gloomy, and the reverses which culminated in the capture of Phila¬ 
delphia impressed patriots with a sense of desperation. They felt a 
clear demarcation between friend and foe necessary; they knew 
that Philadelphia Tories were referring to 1777 as the year with the 
three gallows, and discussing who should hang. But the Legisla¬ 
ture should have gauged better the psychology of large parts of the 
population. Not merely were thousands embittered by the precipi¬ 
tation with which the breach with the past was widened in 1776 and 
1777. Other thousands, ready enough to give mild support to the 
patriot leaders, were offended to learn that the radicals suspected 
them of being traitors. Below this feeling lay the sulkiness of large 
groups of wealthy Quakers and Episcopalians who had controlled the 
Colony, and now had to take orders from the upstarts. A typical 
expression of this spleen may be found in the grumbling of James 
Allen (son of the rich and respected Chief Justice of Colonial days) 

8 He added: “It rendering the number of electors to be so very few, Government 
will be thereby weakened, and all offices being thrown amongst a party through the 
conduct of the disaffected, doth greatly alarm some well-wishers, both to the general 
cause and to [the Constitutionalist] Government”; Pa. Archives, Series I, Vol. V, 
661-63. A resident of Lancaster similarly wrote Wharton: ‘You will hear a loud 
cry against this tyrannical oath, that it was intended for naught but to hinder sub¬ 
stantial, good disposed people to elect or be elected; depriving them of the rights of 
freemen, etc.”; idem, 4 27. 

* Pa. Archives, Series I, Vol. V, 479-80. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


252 

early in 1777. He burst out 10 against the oppression of Pennsyl¬ 
vania: “It may be divided into two classes of men, viz., those that 
plunder and those that are plundered. No justice has been admin¬ 
istered, no crimes punished for nine months. All power is in the 
hands of the associators, who are under no subordination to their 
officers.” 

The Quakers were exhorted by their Yearly Meeting in 1776 to 
hold to the quiet path of neutrality. By the fall of 1777, about one- 
fifth of the adult male Quakers in Philadelphia had joined the 
American army or taken patriot offices, a few had joined the British, 
and the great majority had refused to be drawn into the war. Their 
attitude aroused a considerable popular outcry, and they were natur¬ 
ally accused of cloaking Toryism with assumed impartiality. A forged 
paper of disloyal character purporting to come from their “Spank- 
town Yearly Meeting”—there was no such meeting—was circulated 
the summer of 1777, and for the moment added to the feeling against 
them. 11 

The more radical wing of Congress during 1777, as in the crisis 
of 1776, lent support to the radical wing in Pennsylvania. In one 
harsh step Congress led the way. When the British army approached 
Philadelphia, Congress thought it dangerous to allow the loyalists at 
large, and on Aug. 28, 1777, passed a resolve warning the Pennsyl¬ 
vania executive that various Quakers hated the American cause, and 
recommending that ten men, including John Pemberton, author of 
“a certain seditious” publication, be seized. Under cover of this 
resolution, the Supreme Executive Council made out a list of sus¬ 
pects, and arrested some two-score men, for the most part grave, 
harmless Quakers. Their houses were rifled and desks opened, 
and though a number were paroled upon their promise to support 
the Revolution, about half of them were jailed, without the slightest 
trial, in the Freemasons’ Lodge. Here they were asked to sign a 
written promise of good conduct, but declined, on the ground that 
they had never had even a hearing, nor been convicted of any of¬ 
fence. Your proceedings, they defiantly told the Executive Council, 
“have been so arbitrary that words are wanting to express our sense 
of them.” Meanwhile, the British advance had rolled up to the 

10 Pa. Mag. Hist, and Biog., IX, 176-96. 

11 R. H. Lee wrote Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, Sept. 8, 1777) of the Quakers that 
many showed “a uniform, fixed enmity to American measures . . Henry, “Henry,” 
III, 92-94. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 253 

gates of the city, and the twenty “mischievous people,” as R. H. Lee 
called them, were hurried into wagons and off to Virginia. 12 

These exiles were substantial citizens, of unquestionable integrity 
and in many instances of high social station. It was well to secure 
such men as John Penn, the last Proprietor, who was sent to Freder¬ 
icksburg, and Benjamin Chew, the recent Chief Justice, but the case 
was different with the majority who were hurried off south. Among 
them were Thomas Wharton, first cousin of President Wharton, 
Edward Pennington, John Pemberton, and Thomas Gilpin, the chief 
author of an account of the episode called “The Exiles in Virginia.” 
No less than nine of them had signed the non-importation agree¬ 
ment of 1765. Men much more dangerous were left unmolested. 
The banished suspects were never fully informed of the charge 
against them; they were packed off without time to make provision 
for their families; and though they were allowed to select their own 
boarding houses, they suffered many physical and mental hardships 
in Virginia. They were not released until April, 1778. This rough 
act of Congress and the Council, though it had a good effect on some 
genuine malcontents, aroused bitter feeling, and made the reception 
of the British more cordial. 

For months after the autumn of 1777 the Executive Council was 
occupied with the military perils of the time. On September 25 
Howe and his troops were in Germantown, and on the next day Corn¬ 
wallis marched down the main street of Philadelphia with 3000 men. 
Congress had fled to Lancaster, and the Executive Council and Leg¬ 
islature hurried to the same village. The terms of the Assemblymen 
had almost expired, and it was necessary to take emergency measures 
to provide a continuing administration. Hence the Legislature ap¬ 
pointed the Executive Council, with nine others—the most notable 
of the added men were Rittenhouse and Cannon—a new Council of 
Safety, of which only seven men were required to make a quorum. 
This new dictatorship entered upon its work under Wharton, and in 
its meetings those of the Executive Council as such were briefly 

12 For this affair of the Virginia exiles see Sharpless, “Hist, of the Quaker Govt, 
in Pa.,” II, Ch. 7; Pa. Mag. Hist, and Biog.. VI, 91 ff-J Pa. Archives, Series I, Vol. 
VI, hi ff., 509-10; contemporary press. Light is thrown on the severity of Congress 
by a letter of E. Rutledge to R. R. Livingston, Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 1776. “We have 
great reason to think that the Quakers have determined to refuse our Continental 
Currency. If they make a point of it, we must make a point of hanging them, which 
will bring on a storm that will take the wisdom of all our wise men to direct. If the 
troops under Washington should be defeated, I am satisfied this country will be on the 
brink of Revolt—Nothing will prevent it, but a great deal more firmness than we at 
present profess.” Livingston MSS., N. Y. Public Library. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


2 54 

merged. It passed out of existence on December 6, a Legislature 
whose members had been newly elected from most counties having 
then convened. Meanwhile, Wharton had been reelected President 
of the Council. 13 The parts of the State which did not share in the 
legislative elections because they were in British hands were the 
most conservative parts, so that the radical Constitutionalists were 
stronger than ever. For the second time since independence the 
British menace had given them a fairly free hand. 

While in the winter of 1777-78 Washington was suffering at Valley 
Forge, and Wharton’s Council was doing all it could to safeguard the 
State, the Legislature acted with increasing severity toward loyalists. 
Howe’s capture of the metropolis was followed by the impaneling of 
five men to seize the personal estates of any people of that county 
who joined the royal army. 14 Soon after, the existing law dealing 
with traitors in general terms was followed by one for the attainder 
of a list of specified persons. If they did not surrender before April 
20, 1778, they were to be adjudged guilty of high treason and their 
property forfeited to the State. Among the men thus proscribed 
were Joseph Galloway, who had fled to the British while they were 
still in New York; the influential Allen brothers, John and William, 
the former a one-time member of the Philadelphia committee of in¬ 
spection and observation; and Jacob Duche, recently chaplain to 
Congress, who suddenly turned Tory and wrote Washington a letter 
advising him to yield. Measures to punish the Quakers and other 
conservatives for any refusal to accept State or Continental paper 
money were carried out more drastically than ever. So were the 
laws imposing extra taxes upon Quakers in lieu of military service. 
Naturally, none of the restrictions which the patriots could impose 
upon the lukewarm were relaxed now that the British were ensconced 
in the chief market town, the surrounding farmers were ready to sup¬ 
ply them with food and unwilling to supply Washington, and the 
danger of a general submission to the Crown seemed great. Presi¬ 
dent Wharton died in office at this strained, critical time (May 23, 
1778). 

A brief interregnum followed, until December 1, 1778, during 
which time the capable George Bryan was Acting-President of the 
Council. Its beginning was cheered by the British evacuation of 

18 For the government of Pennsylvania in this troubled time, see Minutes Supreme 
Executive Council of Pa., XI, 325-26 ff. 

14 Pa. Archives, Series I, Vol. VI, 13*14. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 255 

Philadelphia, and the return of the State officials and the Continental 
Congress. The appearance of Philadelphia after the invasion did 
not soften the temper of the radicals. The enemy had left the neat¬ 
est, cleanest, best-built town in America shockingly dirty and un¬ 
kempt, had destroyed public and private buildings, had cut down 
trees and fences, and had filled the streets and gutters with obstruc¬ 
tions. In the outskirts and in Germantown were the marks of bat¬ 
tle. Most of the fine old country seats surrounding the city had 
been destroyed—the British had fired seventeen in one day. New- 
piled mounds in Washington Square showed where the bodies of 
Continental soldiers, maltreated and starved in their prison by the 
brutal jailer Cunningham, had been roughly buried. 

The British had governed the city in such a manner as to bring 
to the surface all the elements of Toryism, and these elements had 
to be dealt with severely. Some 3000 Tories had sailed down the 
Delaware with the British fleet, but many remained. There were 
people in the city who had given the enemy willing assistance, and 
yet seemed to expect the returning patriots to grasp them cordially 
by the hand. The cry for vengeance was irresistible. Ill-educated 
and excitable, the mob or “the Furious Whigs,” as some observers 
called the extremists, insisted upon satisfying their resentment. The 
leaders were for the most part moderate men, but they were unable 
to restrain their followers. Bryan, who had served on the Supreme 
Executive Council since its formation, was both farsighted and kind¬ 
ly, 15 while most of the other prominent patriots of the day—McKean, 
Cadwallader, Ross, Dr. Rush—were opposed to the intemperate de¬ 
mand that the loyalists expiate every sin. Reed, though an en¬ 
lightened man, went much farther with the majority. An associa¬ 
tion was at once formed, the signers of which bound themselves to 
bring all Tories to justice, and Reed’s was the one prominent name 
in the body. 

The executive officers, thus spurred, duly took steps to bring no¬ 
torious loyalists to trial, and in August, the Assembly employed 
Reed as an extra counsel to help the Attorney-General prosecute 
them. During the previous year a Philadelphian named Molesworth, 
who had confessed to being a spy for Lord Howe, had been executed, 
and the same sentence was now demanded for others. At the fall 
session of the Supreme Court in Philadelphia forty-five bills for 

“Konkle’s “Bryan,” Ch. 12. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


256 

treason were sent to the grand jury, and twenty-three cases were 
tried. Only two men, Roberts and Carlisle, were convicted. 16 

Carlisle was a city carpenter, and Roberts owned a mill about ten 
miles from the centre of Philadelphia. Both were Quakers, and both 
had borne excellent reputations before the Revolution. The evidence 
of their guilt was inconclusive. It was proved before Chief Justice 
McKean that Carlisle had accepted a commission to keep one of the 
city gates and issue passes through the lines, and that he had also 
acted as collector of excise. His chief motive, however, many wit¬ 
nesses testified, was not mercenary or disloyal, but simply a desire 
to alleviate distress among his neighbors. Roberts had lived sixty 
years under the British flag, and his sympathies were strongly 
British. When his Quaker friends were exiled to Virginia, his indig¬ 
nation was such that he visited Howe and offered to lead troops to 
intercept the convoy. Finding that his neighbors meditated violence 
against him, he took refuge within the British lines, where he served 
the British forces by leading parties of foragers out among the farms, 
and by supplying provisions and enlisted men. His friends said that 
his worst offences were involuntary. When sentence of death had 
been passed on the men, a flood of petitions for mercy poured in. 
They were signed by the best citizens of the town, nearly 400 for 
Carlisle and nearly 1000 for Roberts. One came from a number of 
ministers; one for each man was signed by jurymen who had tried 
them; and letters from persons of prominence were added. 

It would have been politic as well as humane to commute the 
sentences to imprisonment, but the excitement of the “mob” pre¬ 
vented. On November 4, 1778, the men were executed—driven to 
the common near the city with ropes round their necks, and their 
coffins before them. There would have been more executions had 
the moderate leaders not so guided affairs as to satisfy the radicals 
by the confiscation of loyalist estates, and the publication of long 
lists of traitor’s names. 

Meanwhile, marked changes were occurring in the complexion of 
the Legislature. Throughout the British invasion and the reprisals 
of the radicals, the Anti-Constitutionalists had remained strong. 
James Wilson states that their opposition in the Assembly of 1777 
had become formidable. The Constitutionalists had been forced to 
go outside the State to find a fit man for Attorney-General—Jona- 

18 For the hanging of Roberts and Carlisle, see Pa. Archives, Series I, Vol. VII, 
21 ff.; Sharpless, “Quaker Govt, in Pa.,” II, Ch. 8; contemporary press. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 257 

than D. Sergeant, of New Jersey—and a fit Chief Justice—McKean, 
of Delaware. Especially in Bedford and Philadelphia Counties was 
discontent with the new Constitution deep-rooted. The Constitu¬ 
tionalists knew this, and just before the annual Assembly elections 
in October, 1778, they made it known by a legislative resolution that 
they were willing to take the sense of the voters as to a new Consti¬ 
tutional Convention. As a result, they obtained a decided majority, 
and even elected one popular Assemblyman from Philadelphia by a 
vote of four to one. The Anti-Constitutionalists were “satisfied with 
the late resolve of the Assembly,” one of them wrote; “they had no 
further ends to gratify by putting in persons opposed to the Consti¬ 
tution.” The continued disfranchisement of men as loyalists helped 
the Constitutionalists, and there were other factors. “Since the year 
1777,” declared a newspaper essayist, “the Constitution has gainecj 
many proselytes. Some have been seduced by offices; others have 
been misled by their attachment to the principles of the men who 
were in power . . .; lastly, some have yielded to the government 
through necessity, believing no attempts to improve it would ever 
be made.” 

Nevertheless, the Anti-Constitutionalists had an Assembly min¬ 
ority strong enough to act as a check upon the Constitutionalists 
during 1779. Robert Morris, Mifflin, Thomas Smith, and Clymer 
were all chosen as Anti-Constitutionalists for that year. When the 
Assembly first met early in November, 1778, many objected to the 
oath prescribed by the Constitution, declaring it would interfere with 
their efforts to obtain a new one, and they were allowed to annex a 
reservation to it. By the close of the month, 23 Anti-Constitution¬ 
alists were sitting in a Legislature of 59 members. The Constitu¬ 
tionalists felt the need for a strong leadership to hold their opponents 
in check. 

The first long Administration in the State’s history, Joseph Reed’s, 
began the winter of 1778, when (December 1) by a vote all but 
unanimous, he was elected President of the Council, while George 
Bryan was again made Vice-President. 17 This choice gave the first 
place in Pennsylvania to a man of attractive personality, high talents, 
and unusually good education, but impetuous and lacking in force 
of will. Educated at Princeton, trained to the law under Richard 
Stockton and later at the Middle Temple in London, Reed had prac- 


17 Minutes Supreme Executive Council, XI, 632-34. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


258 

tised before the Revolution first in his native Trenton and then in 
Philadelphia. John Adams’s Diary does not omit a brief character¬ 
ization—“a very sensible and accomplished lawyer, of an amiable 
disposition, soft, tender, friendly”—which suggests his mercurial 
temper. Washington made him an aide, and learned in the first 
two years of the war to esteem him highly; Irving tells us that 
“Reed in fact became, in a little time, the intimate companion of 
his thoughts, his bosom counsellor.” Later he was made Adjutant- 
General, in which position he addressed a foolish letter to Gen. 
Charles Lee, intimating a wish that* Lee might supersede Washing¬ 
ton, the reply to which accidentally fell into Washington’s hands 
and occasioned for a time a marked coolness between the two. A 
reconciliation followed, however, and Washington again treated him 
with every mark of friendship and confidence. Reed served in the 
Continental Congress, and gave valuable counsel upon military 
affairs. A British attempt to bribe him in 1778 elicited a reply 
which increased his popularity: “I am not worth purchasing, but 
such as I am, the King of England is not great enough to do it.” 

Reed’s Administration lasted the three years allowed by the Con¬ 
stitution, for he was reelected in 1779 by a vote not recorded, and in 
1780 by a vote of 59 to 1. It saw Pennsylvania emerge from war 
into peace, but it was a period of internal storm, and it witnessed a 
number of rash acts by the Constitutionalist majority which threw 
them into discredit. 

During 1779 Pennsylvania was kept in a turmoil by the discon¬ 
tent of the ill-paid State troops, the social ferment arising from the 
high price of goods and the depreciation of money, and the con¬ 
tinued quarrels of the Constitutionalists and Anti-Constitutionalists. 
So shabby was the treatment of the Pennsylvania Line by the State 
government that early in the year the officers as well as men were 
almost mutinous. New York not only paid her soldiers better, but 
made special provision for their families, while Virginia was at this 
time distributing six months’ extra pay as a recompense for the de¬ 
clining value of paper money. General St. Clair, commanding the 
Pennsylvania Line, wrote on March 5 that the pay of the troops 
“will scarcely purchase anything.” St. Clair did not believe that 
any of the Anti-Constitutionalists (of whom he was one) were making 
an attempt to draw the officers into the party quarrels of the State, 
but other men did. General Nathanael Greene, then Quartermaster- 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 259 


General in the Continental Army, issued a special order warning his 
subordinates to keep their skirts clear of the struggle between Con¬ 
stitutionalists and Anti-Constitutionalists. The Assembly at once 
agreed upon measures which partly satisfied the soldiery; never¬ 
theless, a large part of the Pennsylvania Line remained sulky. 18 

By this time the public outcry against speculation and high prices 
was an old one, but it grew steadily. In November, 1777, Congress 
had passed a resolution urging the Legislature to take steps against 
“the spirit of sharping and extortion, and the rapid rise of every 
commodity.” Among Washington’s letters to State officers all over 
the North we find similar exhortations. Nowhere did men suffer more 
hardship from the rapid rise in prices, and the fall in the value of 
paper bills, than in Pennsylvania. On January 19, 1779, the Execu¬ 
tive Council issued a proclamation threatening men guilty of “fore¬ 
stalling” and “engrossing” with the heaviest penalties. 

Sensible men knew that Congress could afford some relief simply 
by stopping its emissions of Continental bills. But Congress at the 
moment was much occupied in discussing the charges against Silas 
Deane; and the defenders of the unpopular Deane, as it happened, 
were chiefly Anti-Constitutionalists, Robert Morris being among 
them. During May the public’s economic distress reached such a 
crisis that observers feared an outbreak would result, and on the 
26th President Reed, the Speaker of the Assembly, and others pre¬ 
sented a memorandum to Congress, asking for some national measure 
of alleviation. The only response was an address to the people from 
a Congressional committee, explaining that nothing could be done 
save what the States would do, and that while the States had 
already exerted themselves, “we are not yet convinced there has been 
as much diligence used in detecting and reforming abuses as there 
has been in committing or complaining of them.” This address 
accused greedy men of monopolizing the necessaries of life, and 
petty officials of conniving with them. It thus further inflamed the 
public temper. 

On May 27, 1779, a large meeting in the State House yard, pre¬ 
sided over by that firebrand of independence, Daniel Roberdeau, 


18 The editor of the St. Clair Papers (I. 488) asserts that most of the Continental 
soldiers in the Pennsylvania Line were opposed to the Pennsylvania Constitution, but 
supported it and the State government during the war; St. Clair was of course vigor¬ 
ously against the Constitution, but felt like Edward Biddle who said: Our present 
government is lamentably defective, and has in it the seeds of the worst of tyrannies, 
but to attempt by force to overturn it, would in my judgment be wicked, as well 


as impolitic.” 


26o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


resolved to organize two committees. One was to ascertain the 
prices of articles at periods in the past progressively remote, and 
then to decree, by progressive future steps, a reduction of rates to 
these old levels. The other was to investigate alleged abuses in 
trade and punish them. The meeting declared that profiteering 
had become intolerable, that large stores of goods had been secreted, 
and that the time had come for a forcible lowering of commodity 
prices. Whenever the laws did not suffice, it said, the people should 
take the regulatory power into their own hands. The whole plan 
of price reduction was beguilingly simple. Rates were to be held at 
the level of May i until the beginning of July, and then to be re¬ 
duced to the level of April i; in August to be brought down to the 
level of March i; and so on, turning the wheel backwards. 

Of course this scheme failed utterly. Equally of course, in at¬ 
tempting to put it into operation the two committees set up an 
intolerable tyranny. Leading commercial men were hauled before 
these committee tribunals, and treated with a total disregard for their 
rights. Special severity was shown toward Robert Morris, the in¬ 
quisitors even attempting to interfere with his exertions in supplying 
D’Estaing’s fleet with flour. As the anger on both sides grew, the 
soldiery took a hand. On June 28, a militia company of artillery¬ 
men, just returned from Fort Mifflin, met in the city, praised the 
committee on prices, and adopted an address declaring that the 
wicked speculators and monopolists required “something more 
poignant and striking to bring them to reason.” “We have arms 
and know the use of them,” stated the artillerymen; “if by reason 
of the obstinacy and perseverance of individuals, your committee 
find themselves inadequate to the task, our drum shall beat to arms.” 

Meanwhile, on February 27, 1779, the action which the Assembly 
had taken the previous autumn for submitting the question of a new 
Constitutional Convention to the people had been rescinded, 47 to 7. 
The seven legislators who had voted on the Anti-Constitutionalist 
side included Robert Morris, George Clymer, Thomas Mifflin, and 
Thomas Smith. The newspapers teemed with articles for and 
against this rescinding, which was really a gross breach of faith, 
and feeling between the two parties continued warm all spring. 
When on March 24 the formation of a “Republican Society” to take 
the Anti-Constitutional side was announced in an able paper attrib¬ 
uted to James Wilson, the writer laid many of the evils of the time 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 261 

to the want of a sound State government, and called on the opponents 
of the Constitution to redouble their efforts. Among the 82 signers 
of this paper were, with the men just named, Ross, Cadwallader, 
Edward Biddle, and Francis Hopkinson. A reply at once appeared, 
written by Timothy Matlack, which showed none of Wilson’s ability, 
but great acrimony. 

When in July Robert Morris explained in a public statement his 
grievances against the volunteer committees upon prices, he accused 
them of being in large part actuated, in their spiteful attitude, by 
their political differences with him. Yet, he added, “my sole object 
was to obtain such a Constitution as would in my opinion answer the 
ends of good government.” The conservative Anti-Constitutionalists 
included a majority of the Philadelphians of wealth, and rich mer¬ 
chants were conspicuous in their ranks. Since it was in the rich 
merchants that the radicals saw the chief obstacle to lower prices, 
some hotheads leaped to the conclusion that the Anti-Constitution¬ 
alists, in revenge for their political failure, were grinding the faces 
of the poor. Men like Morris, maintained abusive fellows, were in¬ 
different to the public welfare so long as they could extort high 
profits from the hard-working poor through the derangement of 
business. Such reckless agitators fomented a popular belief that 
if the Constitution were revised by the conservatives, the govern¬ 
ment would fall into the hands of a privileged few. The old feeling 
against the Tories and neutrals was still powerful, as an amendment 
stiffening the Test Act in September, 1779, showed; and it and the 
sentiment against profiteers assisted each other. 

A thunder-clap was needed to clear the sultry air, and it came in 
the “Fort Wilson Riot” of October 4, 1779. The success with which 
several able lawyers, especially James Wilson, had been defending 
merchants like Morris in the courts against the price-fixing com¬ 
mitteemen had led the radicals to tack up placards all over town 
denouncing Wilson, Morris, and others as undesirable citizens. On 
the date named a meeting of the militia was called at Byrne’s Tavern 
at the edge of the city common, and reports spread that its object 
was to lay plans for arresting the alleged monopolists and forestalled, 
and for imprisoning or expelling them. A feeling that trouble was 
imminent seized the city. In alarm, some thirty conservatives, who 
feared that the meeting would result in an attack upon Wilson, went 
to that lawyer’s house, among them General Mifflin, General William 


262 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Thomson, and Colonel Campbell, a one-armed veteran, with other 
officers and respected citizens. 

The house was a large mansion at the corner of Third and Walnut 
Streets, at no great distance from the City Tavern. While the in¬ 
mates prepared for defense, word of the imminent clash was sent to 
President Reed, then confined by an illness. The expected happened. 
A mixed mob of militiamen and loafers, armed with muskets and 
bayonets, early in the afternoon moved up Walnut Street, beating 
drums, yelling, dragging two field-pieces, and carrying a number of 
prisoners. When it arrived before Wilson’s house it surged toward 
the gate; Colonel Campbell from an upper window ordered it to 
march past; and shots were exchanged. In the midst of the firing, 
Mifflin stepped upon the balcony and tried to address the assailants, 
the window sash being broken by bullets beside him. Scattered for 
a moment by the fusillade from the house, the mob then turned 
back and with hammers and bars burst in at one entrance. The fire 
was renewed, and they again fled. At this moment President Reed, 
his garments half buttoned and hair flying, galloped up with members 
of the City Horse hard behind him. 

Profound excitement was aroused throughout the city when the 
news of the outbreak spread. One man had been killed on each side. 
Arrests were immediately made, some of the mob going to jail, and 
several defenders of “Fort Wilson” giving heavy bail. The next 
day President Reed called a meeting in the Supreme Court Room, 
where both sides aired their grievances and where he made an address 
that did much to tranquilize public feeling. There were no prosecu¬ 
tions, and by the time the Assembly had passed an act of general 
pardon it was agreed that Philadelphia was in a better frame of mind 
than since 1775. The radicals made no more lawless moves, and 
the attempt at arbitrary price-fixing was abandoned with consid¬ 
erable chagrin. 

The session of 1779-80 was remarkable for the emergence of 
George Bryan as the dominating leader of the Legislature. Bryan, 
now the most powerful figure in State politics, had served three 
years as Councilor, or as long as the Constitution allowed. Constitu¬ 
tionalists who had lamented the lack of brains in their party wished 
his guidance in the Assembly, and he was elected in October, 1779; 
he had an easy majority to do his bidding, for a vigorous campaign 
had been waged, and the Anti-Constitutionalist strength fell to a low 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 263 

ebb. 19 With him was chosen Charles Wilson Peale, one of the most 
versatile of Pennsylvanians—famous as a painter, expert as a silver¬ 
smith, a soldier who had fought at Trenton and Germantown, and 
soon to be the proprietor of a museum of natural history. 

As the Constitutionalist Society had hoped, Bryan showed splendid 
parliamentary leadership, and could almost say, “L’etat, c?est moi.” 
At the autumn session thirty-six committees were appointed, of 
which he received the chairmanship of twenty-five of the most im¬ 
portant, and Peale of five others. Much valuable work was accom¬ 
plished by the Legislature. Bryan was proudest of the act for 
gradually abolishing slavery, a noble measure which greatly pleased 
the Quakers. Another far-reaching enactment was that creating the 
High Court of Errors and Appeals. An overdue law, surprisingly 
liberal in terms, stripped the Proprietary family of most of its 
property, including the quit-rents. Penn was allowed to keep only 
what could in an intimate sense be called his possessions, as his 
manors; but he was allowed a compensation of £130,000 sterling, a 
sum paid soon after the Revolution. The most controversial of the 
laws passed was that depriving the College of its charter. 20 

The College, till recently the chief pride of all Philadelphia, 
had taken its origin in a pamphlet which Franklin published in 1749, 
called “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsyl¬ 
vania.” A union of private generosity with an appropriation by the 
Common Council resulted in the opening of an academy in January, 
1751, offering three courses—English, Latin, and mathematical— 
the success of which was so immediate and full that application was 
made for a charter. When this was granted in 1753, the trustees 
determined to enlarge the course of instruction, and elected William 
Smith to be teacher of logic, rhetoric, and moral and natural phi¬ 
losophy. Dr. Smith, of Aberdeen University, at this time not thirty, 

19 An effort by Bryan to dominate legislation early in 1779 , as Vice-President and 
controller of the Council, had met an immovable obstacle in the Assembly’s jealousy 
of the Executive body. On Feb. 5, 1779, the Council voted a formal message to the 
Assembly calling attention to the Congressional requisition for $15,000,000, to profit¬ 
eering, to the Virginia and Connecticut land questions, the need for a Court of 
Errors, the problem of the proprietary estates, the abolition of slavery, and so on. 
For abolition, Bryan had drafted a law, which he submitted. For nearly a century 
the Assembly had struggled to prevent the Council from assuming any legislative 
functions when it was acting as an Executive Council, the Governor being absent; 
that ingrown fear was now all-powerful, even against a trusted leader like Bryan. 
The Constitutionalists in the Assembly meant to have no second chamber. They at 
once voted a resolution that all bills must originate “in this house.” “Minutes of 
Supreme Executive Council,” XI; Konkle’s “Bryan,” 168 ff. 

20 For the resounding quarrel over the College, see Proceedings Relative to the 
Convs. of 1776 and 1790, pp. 118 ff.; Provost Smith’s petition, Pa. Gazette, June 14, 
1783; histories of Univ. of Pa. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


264 

was a man of energy and learning, and he made the courses so much 
broader and more thorough that the academy was soon giving in¬ 
struction equal to Harvard’s or Yale’s. Having been placed upon a 
collegiate basis, it deserved, in Smith’s opinion, corresponding honors 
and privileges, application was made for a new charter, and in 1755 
one was obtained which gave the power of conferring degrees. The 
first commencement of the college was held in 1757. Thenceforth 
it prospered under Provost Smith and its twenty-four trustees, be¬ 
coming famous throughout the Colonies and drawing students from 
the South and even the West Indies. In 1765 the teaching of medi¬ 
cine began, and after that date—Dr. Rush joining the faculty in 
1769—Philadelphia was the medical center of British North America. 

To the Pennsylvania radicals many of the men prominent in college 
affairs were totally obnoxious. Provost Smith was a Scotchman by 
birth, and a protege of the Proprietary family, which had been the 
chief patron of the College. He and nearly all the active trustees 
were members of the Church of England. A few, as Richard Penn 
and William Allen, were Tories. Others belonged to the reactionary 
faction of the Whigs, struggling to delay independence and to defeat 
the new State Constitution; among them were Robert Morris, Francis 
Hopkinson, Alexander Wilcocks, Edward Biddle, John Cadwalader, 
and James Wilson, a list including three “signers” and one general. 
When the Test Act was passed, a small group of trustees delayed 
taking the oath of allegiance, and when the British occupied Phila¬ 
delphia, three voluntarily remained in the city and accepted British 
protection. The great mass of Whigs after the evacuation were 
ready to help attack almost any object labeled “Tory.” As a matter 
of fact, the College was politically harmless, and educationally it was 
healthy and capable of doing excellent work if well supported; the 
State should have protected it. But with party feeling so high, it was 
hard to forget that the Anti-Constitutionalists controlled it. 

The repeal of the charter (November 27, 1779) was arbitrary, 
though not without legal steps or stated reasons. The Assembly had 
first appointed a committee to investigate the Trustees’ conduct and 
general college affairs, and Dr. Smith prepared a long defensive 
paper, while counsel was allowed to appear for the College; but 
there was no judicial hearing, as there should have been. One reason 
assigned for voiding the Charter was that the trustees, through 
gaps in their ranks, “had lost their activity and were incapable of 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 265 

exercising their essential functions.” Another was that the Charter 
required each trustee to swear allegiance to King George. A third 
was that the trustees, by a by-law of 1764, had restricted the original 
wide foundation. Finally, it was declared that the State was bound 
to keep public education in patriotic hands. 

All these reasons were empty, and a more dishonorable act than 
the repeal of the charter has seldom stained Pennsylvania’s record. 
As for the alleged impotence of the trustees, twenty-one of them had 
duly taken the oath required by the patriot government; twelve 
trustees, the Provost, and all professors had taken it before the 
summer of 1778. Three—Penn, Allen, and one Dr. Bond—did not 
take it, and as if to admit its insincerity in this charge, the Assembly 
appointed Dr. Bond a trustee of the new university it at once 
erected. In 1764 a fear had grown up that the College might be¬ 
come sectarian, and to combat it, the trustees bound themselves by 
a by-law to see that the original plan “be not narrowed,” and that 
no man should be given special favors because he was a communicant 
or non-communicant of the Anglican Church. In asserting that this 
by-law restricted the foundation, the Assemblymen were flatly con¬ 
tradicting the facts. The Anti-Constitutionalists justly wrote later: 
“We . . . consider this suggestion but as the specious coloring to 
a scene of predetermined injustice, which the actors therein could 
not safely trust to a court of law.” To attack the charter because 
it had required an oath of allegiance to the King was ridiculous, for 
all such oaths became invalid and a dead letter when independence 
was declared. 

Moreover, the abrogation of the charter was unconstitutional, for 
at the instance of Franklin and Provost Smith, a clause had been 
written into the Constitution declaring that all societies of religion 
and learning should remain endowed with the same rights and 
privileges they possessed under the laws of the Province. It was, 
again, in defiance of all principles of law to hold a corporation re¬ 
sponsible for the alleged misdeeds of trustees. Finally, whatever 
action was taken should have been taken by a court, not by the 
Assembly. In all, the Anti-Constitutionalists were warranted in 
asserting: “We consider this act as a blind sacrifice to party, of 
the rights of individuals (many of whom had eminently served the 
cause of this country in promoting our glorious Revolution); and 
as an encouraging example to future attempts against whatever may 


266 THE AMERICAN STATES 

be imagined best secured and fenced by the highest legal sanc¬ 
tions. . . 

The act abrogating the charter and dissolving the trustees and 
faculty also vested the College property in a new body called “The 
Trustees of the University of the State of Pennsylvania,” and di¬ 
rected that certain confiscated estates be used for the new University. 
But the fresh institution failed to prosper. The disruption of the 
College destroyed for the time being one of the two most democratic 
and liberal-spirited schools in America, and the damage it wrought 
was not fully repaired until after the Civil War. When in 1789 
another Legislature passed an act restoring the College to its charter 
and property, the preamble stated that the law of a decade previous 
had been “repugnant to justice, a violation of the Constitution of 
this Commonwealth, and dangerous in its precedents to all in¬ 
corporated bodies.” 

The year 1780 and the first half of 1781 were a critical season for 
America, and nowhere in the North were they more anxious than 
in Pennsylvania. On June 1, 1780, the Legislature at Washington’s 
request vested Reed and his Council with power to declare martial 
law in any legislative recess, and soon afterwards under his extra¬ 
ordinary authority Reed began the seizure of provisions for the 
army. On New Year’s day, 1781, occurred the mutiny of the 
Pennsylvania Line at Morristown, N. J., arising from the indefinite 
length of the enlistments and the lack of food, clothing, and pay. 
One of Reed’s best services to the nation was his prompt action to 
quell it, when Sir Henry Clinton’s emissaries were already among 
the rebellious men. A few months later the financial straits of 
Pennsylvania gave birth to a measure upon which the Constitu¬ 
tionalists and Anti-Constitutionalists again sharply divided. The 
State paper had enormously depreciated, as the Legislature in 1780 
recognized when it established a scale of real values in settling with 
the troops. Yet the Assembly in the spring of 1781 took steps to 
issue an additional £800,000, of which only £100,000 was safeguarded 
with any security; and at the same time severely penalized any 
failure to accept the money at its face value. Not only did the 
Anti-Constitutionalists, led by Mifflin and Morris, oppose this finan¬ 
cial panacea of Bryan’s, but one of them, supposedly Morris, wrote 
an objection to the emission which was quite unanswerable. The 
event fulfilled his prophecies of disaster. The new bills soon be- 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 267 

came worthless. As early as June, 1781, President Reed had to 
write General Greene that the paper “has fairly run its race.” 

A turn of the political tide in Pennsylvania became evident during 
the last year of the war. To friends and foe alike, the Constitution¬ 
alist Legislature seemed incompetent. It never does anything for the 
troops, complained General William Irvine in the spring of 1781; 
it orders the Pennsylvania Line to march and fight, but “are forges, 
tents, wagons, etc., ever thought of? No.” Even Reed admitted 
that the legislators, intimidated by a fear of popular grumbling, 
dared attempt nothing vigorous, and that higher taxes, more effi¬ 
ciently collected, were an almost imperative need. The Constitu¬ 
tionalists had reached their greatest strength in 1779, and it slowly 
waned. They still held their place partly by virtue of the stringent 
Test Act, against which in 1781 more and more vociferous protests 
were made by the disfranchised Quakers and others. 21 Growing bold, 
the moderates filled the press with stories of the waste of public 
money, of graft in the disposal of confiscated estates, and of the 
purchase of city lots with funds stolen from the treasury. When 
the news of Cornwallis’s surrender reached Philadelphia, the radical 
“mob” suddenly revived in a brief and final ebullition; but in the 
calm wrought by peace the conservatives prepared to bring Dickin¬ 
son back and take over the government. 


III. Post-War Rancors in New York 


Against the background of Pennsylvania’s measures of persecution 
and repression we can advantageously study the same movement of 
radical vengefulness against the Tories and neutrals in New York. 
It had a longer life in New York, which was much longer in British 
control. As the Pennsylvania loyalists had been most numerous in 
and around Philadelphia, so in the other Province they were 
strongest in and near New York city. When the metropolis was 
delivered into American hands, the rural legislators and the rough, 
ill-educated city mechanics and clerks were hard to control. 


21 Materials for this reaction had constantly been at hand. Note, for example, the 
explanation of “Candid” in the Pa. Packet, Jan. ai 1779 , of the fact that in the 
recent Assembly elections the Constitutionalists had four times as many votes as the 
Anti-Constitutionalists, which he showed to be quite misleading. Ill-feeling over the 
Test Act was strikingly expressed in the fall of 1778- In Chester County the authori¬ 
ties excluded non-jurors from the polls. They outnumbered the jurors and promptly 
held an election of their own. Livingston MSS., W. W. Livingston to R. R. Living¬ 
ston, Philadelphia, Nov. 20, 1778. 


268 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


The Continental Congress on June 24, 1776, had declared that the 
property of all adherents to the Crown would be liable to confisca¬ 
tion. Some weeks later the New York Provincial Convention de¬ 
fined allegiance, citizenship, and treason, thus paving the way for 
the systematic sequestration of Tory property. In March, 1777, 
commissioners of sequestration were appointed for most of the 
counties not in British possession, and the seizure of personal posses¬ 
sions began; while many Tories who refused to take the oath of 
allegiance were expelled or sent within the British lines. All this 
was proper, but a demand arose for more rigor. In March, 1778, 
the Council of Revision vetoed an unduly harsh bill to disfranchise 
all those who, since independence, had denied the authority of the 
revolutionary government, or had aided the British. The outcry 
at once redoubled, and in Dutchess County alone 450 citizens signed 
a petition for drastic measures. In October, 1779, just after the 
“Fort Wilson Riot” in Pennsylvania, there became law the Con¬ 
fiscation Act, drawn up by John Morin Scott and James Jay. It 
declared a list of 59 persons, including the former Governors, Try on 
and Dunmore, and seven Councilors of the Crown regime, guilty 
of felony, and their estates forfeit. 

Its worst feature, however, was that it empowered the courts, on 
oath of one credible person, to indict any man as a Tory, and if he 
failed to appear after four weeks’ advertisement, to pronounce his 
property confiscated. Many a loyal though cautious patriot could 
thus be robbed of his all by malicious or prejudiced neighbors. The 
partial motive of greed behind this legislation was obvious, for two- 
thirds of the property of New York, including the Crown lands, was 
owned by British or Tory interests. A strong minority in the Legis¬ 
lature opposed the Act, but Governor Clinton supported it. There¬ 
after the patriots were clearly divided into moderate and extremist 
factions, the latter the more numerous and sustained by the State 
Administration, the former possessing the more brains and character. 

Alexander Hamilton early appeared as the chief advocate of 
leniency and justice. The young soldier returned north after the 
capture of Yorktown, found a home with his father-in-law, General 
Schuyler, during the winter, took in May, 1782, the petty office of 
a receiver of Continental taxes, and after a few months of law study, 
was admitted to the bar. Perhaps in some faint degree because he 
had begun his career with a tendency towards the Tory side, which 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 269 

a visit to Boston had corrected, in larger degree because his tastes 
were fundamentally conservative and aristocratic, and in chief part 
because he knew the importance of respecting our international obli¬ 
gations, and loved fairness, Hamilton became an energetic opponent 
of Clinton’s policy towards the Tories. 

The cessation of fighting did not cool the anger of the extremists, 
which rose higher at the legislative session of 1783 than ever before. 
Had Clinton had his way, he would have disfranchised every man 
who had willingly stayed in New York or any other place occupied 
by the British. He would “rather roast in hell to all eternity 
than . . . show mercy to a damned Tory,” he roughly declared 
during the war. The Legislature, says a contemporary, was composed 
of men “fervent, bigoted in their political zeal, and warm in their 
resentment; their feelings were vindictive; their intemperance and 
indiscretion banished property and subjects.” 22 Early in 1783, this 
resentful body passed the famous Trespass Act. Its object was to 
enable any citizen whose property had been occupied or entered 
upon by British authority during the British occupation to bring 
suit for damages against such occupant or entrants. Scarce a build¬ 
ing owned by patriots on Manhattan Island but had been taken 
over by new occupants under Sir Harry Clinton, or had British 
troops quartered in it, or been injured, and all who could fabricate a 
case prepared to demand high damages or arrears of rent. The 
evacuation of the King’s army from the city took place in November, 
1783. Till this time the Confiscation Act had not been given much 
effect, but now in the metropolis and elsewhere the authorities began 
to apply it so ruthlessly that between it and the Confiscation Act, 
it was certain that many Loyalists would be stripped of their last 
penny. 

Simultaneously the most savage deeds were committed by lawless 
men. When the British evacuated the country north of New York 
city, “the Skinners” of Westchester followed and, seizing stray 
Loyalists, brutally misused them; some were beaten to death, while 
others had the tendons of arms or legs cut and were lamed for life. 
All the moderate leaders were shocked by such deeds and by the 
Trespass Act. Jay wrote from Paris denouncing them. The zealots 
who wish to involve all Tories and neutrals “in indiscriminate 
punishment and ruin certainly carry the matter too far,” he said. 


M N. Y. Journal, April io, 1788. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


270 

“It would be an instance of unnecessary rigor and unmanly revenge 
without a parallel except in the annals of religious rage in times of 
bigotry and blindness. . . . Victory and peace should in my opinion 
be followed by clemency, moderation, and benevolence, and we 
should be careful not to sully the glory of the Revolution by licen¬ 
tiousness and cruelty.” The legislative elections were coming on, 
and Schuyler accused many noisy politicians of preaching revenge 
as a means of getting office. But there seemed little hope for such 
humane counsels. The troops who marched down the Bowery Lane 
into New York as the British fleet put out to sea, the joyous exiles 
who flocked in upon their heels, found a scene that stirred deep 
resentment. A large part of the town was gutted by fire, the rest 
was defaced and dirty, and on every hand were ruined patriots. The 
correspondent of the South Carolina Gazette wrote just after the 
evacuation (December 12, 1783) that the spirit of revenge and 
persecution was “universal.” At this juncture Hamilton in his 
gallant way stepped forward to combat the intolerance, not with 
words, but with legal action. 23 

One case arising under the Trespass Act, that of Rutgers vs. 
Waddington, was expedited to furnish a test of the law’s force, and 
Hamilton was announced for the defendant’s side, which the at¬ 
tendant circumstances made peculiarly difficult. Elizabeth Rutgers 
was a widow, who had fled the city on the approach of General 
Howe, and had been rendered almost penniless. Waddington was 
a wealthy Tory, representing a firm of brewers into whose hands a 
brewhouse and malthouse on Maiden Lane, belonging to Mrs. 
Rutgers, had passed in 1778, and who had paid for three years a 
rent of £150 annually to a Commissary-General, by order of the 
British commander; for three additional years nothing had been 
paid. When the Americans took possession of New York, the brewers 
were glad to begin paying to Mrs. Rutger’s son, as the American 
authorities ordered, but Mrs. Rutgers wanted arrears of rent also, 
and filed suit. The statutes seemed, on superficial view, to offer her 
a plain remedy for a plain injustice. The prosecution was conducted 
in the Mayor’s court, which had jurisdiction, by no less able a man 
than Attorney-General Egbert Benson. 

23 The story of the case of Rutgers vs. Waddington is in some particulars essen¬ 
tially misstated in most histories. The account here given is based upon the legis¬ 
lative journals and contemporary press as well as Hamilton’s “Works,” and the Papers 
of Gov. Clinton. See also Leake’s “Lamb,” 296-98; and a review of the case in Md. 
Gazette, July 19, 1785. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 271 

Yet Hamilton’s gifts of logic and lucid expression threw the issue 
into clear relief—the issue whether, after a war had been closed by 
a solemn treaty, the subjects of one nation could sue those of another 
for injuries committed while the war was in progress. The cap¬ 
tured property of Widow Rutgers had been used according to the 
rules of international law, just as immovable British property cap¬ 
tured by Americans had in innumerable instances been put to patriot 
uses. The peace treaty had included an adjustment of all claims for 
damages raised by both sides. Hamilton’s brief is of interest for its 
bearing not only upon the immediate issue but upon the relations 
between the States and the national government. “The claim to 
damages for injuries done is in the public, who may agree for an 
equivalent, or release the claim without it,” he said; “and, our 
external sovereignty existing in the Union, the property of all the 
citizens, in regard to foreign states, belongs to the United States.” 
The United States had made a treaty which completely exonerated 
the British from further demands. “Hence to make the defendant 
answerable, would be a breach of the treaty of peace. It would be a 
breach also, of the Articles of Confederation.” 24 In short, Hamilton 
skillfully demonstrated that the truer patriotism, the truer national 
sentiment, would lie in deciding for the Tory, while he above all 
presented an irrefutable legal argument. 

Fortunately, the Mayor’s Court was not so much swayed by local 
rancors as might have been expected; the Recorder or chief judicial 
officer, Richard Varick, was a man of probity and ability, who had 
once been Washington’s private secretary. Hamilton’s argument 
won the day. The court refused to allow the widow Rutgers any 
rent for the three years in which Waddington had paid it to the 
British authorities, holding that the Trepass Act violated the treaty, 
and that “no State in this Union can alter or abridge, in a single 
point, the federal articles or the treaty.” It did not assert the right 
of any court to override a law of plain intent, but it did assert that 
when the consequences of a law had not been clearly foreseen by 
the Legislature, then the judges were at liberty to expound it by 
rule of equity, and if they liked, even to disregard it. 

A storm of indignation followed this decision. An association of 
citizens was formed to have it reversed. At the meeting of the 
Legislature that autumn the Mayor’s Court was summoned to appear 

34 Hamilton’s “Works,” IV, 408. 


272 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


and explain its action, and a resolution of censure in two parts was 
introduced by an up-State Assemblyman. The first part declared 
that the court’s decision was in its tendency subversive of all law 
and order, and led directly to anarchy and confusion, for it would 
put all the Legislature’s enactments at the mercy of the judiciary; 
the second part demanded of the Council of Appointment that it 
name as the Mayor and Recorder such men as would uphold the 
law of the land. By a vote of 25 to 15 the former part was passed, 
but the latter was easily defeated (31 to 9). 25 Public feeling rose 
so high that Mayor Duane sent a statement of the case to Lord 
Mansfield for an opinion. Two successive Legislatures reaffirmed 
the Trespass Act, and loyalists continued to be mulcted under it. 

But Hamilton now boldly entered upon a pamphlet war to support 
his position. In a letter signed “Phocion” he attacked the intolerance 
of the radical Clintonians, and both in it and a sequel demonstrated 
the impolicy as well as illegality of any repudiation of treaty obliga¬ 
tions. Suppose Great Britain should refuse any further compliance 
with the treaty because of the American violations of it, he suggested. 
Could America renew the war? His readers knew that she could 
not, and that no European nation would assist the United States 
to regain rights forfeited by a wanton contempt of international 
faith. Hamilton defined the character of the true Whig, and by 
implication that of the opposition party which he led. “The spirit 
of Whiggism,” he stated, “is beneficent, generous, humane, and just. 
These men [Clintonians] inculcate revenge, cruelty, perfidy, and 
persecution.” He raised his voice also against the plans for arbi¬ 
trarily exiling or disfranchising great masses of New Yorkers. 

Hamilton’s vigorous protests were needed. A special election for 
the State of New York had been held, by Governor Clinton’s procla¬ 
mation, in December, 1783, a few weeks after the evacuation of the 
metropolis. Naturally, the violent radicals were able to choose 
their legislative candidates. In at least one county, Orange, when 
a man unwilling to breathe fire and slaughter against all Tories stood 
for a seat, a mob forced him to retire. There were three parties in 
the States, as Robert R. Livingston says—the Tories; the mild 
Whigs, “who wish to suppress all violences, to soften the rigor of 
the laws against the loyalists, and not to banish them from . . . 
social intercourse”; and the violent Whigs, “who are for expelling all 

26 Assembly Journal, Oct. 27, Oct. 29 , Nov. 2, 1784. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 273 

Tories from the State.” The last-named had it all their own way. 
In New York city they chose such extremists as John Lamb, Marinus 
Willett, Henry Rutgers, and Isaac Sears. Many of the proscribed 
citizens had petitioned for permission to return to their homes, but 
when Gov. Clinton opened the Legislature in January, 1784, it was 
with a speech to steel it against such pleas. How can we accede to 
the request, he demanded, “while we recollect the general progress 
of a war which has been marked with cruelty and rapine; while we 
survey the ruins of this once flourishing city and its vicinity; while 
we sympathize with the calamities which have reduced so many of 
our virtuous fellow citizens to want and distress . . .?” 

After formally rejecting the recommendations of Congress for 
moderation toward the Loyalists, the Legislature proceeded to pass 
three more iniquitous laws. One was to facilitate the sale of several 
great Tory properties, like the De Lancey and Bayard estates on 
Manhattan, and the Rapalje estate in what is now Brooklyn. The 
second, under date of May 12, 1784, disfranchised and deprived of 
other civil rights all who had in any way lent comfort to the 
British forces. Interpreted literally, it excluded from the polls 
two-thirds of the adult males of New York city, Richmond, and 
Kings; nine-tenths of those of Queens County; the great majority 
of those of Westchester; and one-fifth those of Suffolk. 26 Yet the 
Assembly passed it by a vote of more than three to one, and the 
Senate of nearly two to one. The Council of Revision, upon which 
places were held by Chief Justice Lewis Morris and Judge John 
Sloss Hobart, conservative men, rejected the bill. It argued that 
the measure retrospectively penalized “the voluntary remaining in 
a country overrun by the enemy,” an act perfectly innocent, that it 
created a new court in violation of the Constitution, that it flatly 
violated the peace treaty, and that it was inconsistent with the 
public good, since in many localities it would “be difficult, in many 
absolutely impossible, to find men to fill the necessary offices, even 
for conducting elections, until a new set of inhabitants could be 
procured.” But the bill was repassed over the Council's veto. The 
third bill made it impossible for attainted loyalists to reenter the 
State and use the privilege, promised them by the treaty, of re¬ 
purchasing their former estates. A resolution was passed calling 
upon all Governors to interchange lists of banished persons. Indeed, 

28 Flick, “Loyalism in New York,” 163-64; cf. Jones’s “Hist. N. Y.,” II, 249-50. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


274 

a proposal was even made for confiscating the estates of the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel. 

Hamilton’s opposition to these measures made him the target 
of as great abuse as he suffered when in later years he attacked the 
excesses of the French Revolution. The first of his letters of 
“Phocion,” early in 1784, drew a reply from one Isaac Ledyard, 
written over the name “Mentor.” Hamilton’s second letter de¬ 
molished Ledyard’s argument that all who remained in the British- 
occupied region thereby became aliens. A tradition runs that it was 
purposed by a knot of Ledyard’s companions that each in turn 
should challenge Hamilton to a duel, until one was able to kill him, 
but that Ledyard vetoed this murderous scheme. It is at least 
certain that an opponent named Oswald challenged Hamilton to 
a duel which never occurred. 

Reflecting men felt the force of Hamilton’s appeals, and some 
hotheads were taught shame by them. The moderate Whigs were 
by no means ready to erase the line between those who had fought 
for America and those who had been indifferent or hostile, but they 
wished the line defined by public sentiment, not by law. Yet after 
all, the intolerance had to burn itself out. The fear that the Revo¬ 
lution might actually be undone persisted a long while. A meeting 
of the Sons of Liberty early in April, 1784, resolved that “in our 
opinion it is impossible that Whigs and Tories can ever associate, or 
be mingled together, or that government can be considered as com¬ 
pletely established, while so great a number of Tories, both of 
wealth and influence, remain in the metropolis.” They ill-naturedly 
added that where loyalists held positions or had established busi¬ 
nesses, they must often exclude patriots from a livelihood—there 
not being room for all on this vast shaggy continent! Other 
radicals, in a memorial to the Senate, declared themselves shocked 
to find that the loyalists, by remaining in the city, had been so 
“impudent as to expose themselves to the resentment of their injured 
and incensed countrymen.” 27 They could never, even in decades, 
be good citizens, and an alienation bill must be passed. Yet Jay 
was able to write Lord Lansdowne just two years later that already 
some disqualified Tories were sitting in the Legislature, loyalists 
had been restored to the practice of the law, and the obnoxious 
statutes were being less and less enforced. 28 

27 See Pa. Packet, April 6, 1784, for the resolve; S. C. Gazette, March 25 1784 for 
the memorial. 28 Jay’s “Works,” III, 191-92. ’ 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 275 


IV. Post-War Rancors in Pennsylvania 

The process of reconciliation was well advanced in Pennsylvania 
before it was well started in New York. The former State had not 
been riven in two during the war; while the people, thanks to the 
many Quakers, Mennonites, and other peaceable sectarians, and 
to the responsibility taught by a better diffusion of wealth, were 
more open to counsels of moderation. No such knightly champion of 
justice appeared there as Hamilton, but an earnest leader was avail¬ 
able in Dickinson, and he had stout aides in Morris, Mifflin, and 
Wilson. 

A transition between the severity of Reed’s Administration and 
the calm of Dickinson’s was afforded by the brief term—less than a 
year—of William Moore, who had been Vice-President, and was a 
Constitutionalist, but of a more sober temper than most. During 
his tenure in 1782 the attacks of the Anti-Constitutionalists upon 
their steadily weakening opponents were maintained. Early in the 
year Dickinson returned from his long sojourn in Delaware, and 
was warmly welcomed. All the advantages of intellect were with 
him, Rush, Morris, and Wilson, for they represented the best abilities 
of the State; while now that Reed was busy repairing his shattered 
fortune by law practise, and Bryan had become a judge of the 
Supreme Court, the Constitutionalists were plainly ill-officered. “They 
have all the violence of a party, without the abilities to support it,” 
asserted an opponent. 29 Their new leaders coming to the front, of 
whom the chief were John Smilie, an Irish immigrant, Wm. Findley, 
an immigrant from Ulster, and Robert Whitehill, born of north Irish 
parents in this country, were rough and ill-educated men. It was 
said that their legislators had drawn the laws badly; that the land 
office act was impracticable; that the act for settling old Treasury 
accounts on a scale of depreciation was unintelligible; and that most 
other new statutes were calculated for the profit of the lawyers. 
Writers like “Candor” in the spring of 1782 justifiably contrasted 
the evil measures of the Constitutionalists with the sound proposals 
of the Anti-Constitutionalists. Which party, they asked 30 - 

continued the tender law in force, after the Continental money fell to 30 or 4? 
for one? What party excited and supported a committee with illegal and unconsti¬ 
tutional powers, that had well nigh produced a civil war in this State? What party 
paid off the Pennsylvania Line with State money, instead of specie, when it was 

29 Freeman’s Journal, Dec. 5, 1781. 

30 Idem, Feb. 6, 1782. 



THE AMERICAN STATES 


276 

three to one, when several of their own civil officers refused to take it, and by 
delaying their drafts upon the treasury received their pay in gold and silver, after 
the repeal of the last tender law? What party set the merchant and farmer at vari¬ 
ance, and half ruined the trade of the city, by embargoes? . . . 

But again, who instituted the Bank that kept our army from disbanding in 1780? 
Who protested against the tender law? Who procured the repeal of it? Whose influ¬ 
ence opened the ports and revived the industry of the merchant and farmer, by the 
importation of specie among us? Who instituted the national bank? 

The Constitutionalists were sure of an Assembly majority the fall 
of 1782, but not of a majority of the joint vote of Assembly and 
Council, which was necessary to elect a President. Dickinson was 
first chosen to the Council from Philadelphia—“the country will 
vote nearly as one man in your favor,” Benjamin Rush wrote him. 
His only rival in the Council for the Presidency was General James 
Potter, an ill-educated man who had been Vice-President. Was “a 
brave honest soldier,” asked “Cincinnatus,” to be slighted for the 
“fugitive colonel” who had abandoned the Pennsylvania troops in 
1776? Dickinson was also scored for his opposition to the Declara¬ 
tion, and his reluctance to accept paper money. Yet he obtained 41 
votes against 32 for Potter (November 7, 1782). He and the 
other Anti-Constitutionalist leaders were thereby vindicated from 
the charge of unpatriotic conduct. Dickinson in sulky retirement 
on his Delaware farm presents no heroic figure, but he had shown 
himself ready to fight as a private in Delaware and to accept civic 
responsibilities there; and now he published an elaborate defense 
of his record during the Revolution. 

Dickinson, like Reed, served three years, until the fall of 1785. 
Sensible men hoped that his administration would effect a rapid 
dissolution of war-time animosities, together with constitutional re¬ 
vision and liberal legislation, but the years were troubled and re¬ 
forms slow. The President had little power to carry out any pro¬ 
gram. The Constitutionalists always controlled the Council, for 
one Councilor was chosen for each county. At first the Anti-Con¬ 
stitutionalists controlled the Legislature; but the opposition had a 
sufficient minority in 178^, and 1784 to block the measures most 
needed, simply by depriving the house of the quorum of two-thirds 
required, and the Legislature elected the fall of the latter year was 
heavily Constitutionalist again. 

We would expect the Anti-Constitutionalists first to attack the 
unjust Test act, which so crippled their party. 31 Speaker George 
Gray estimated that the law deprived nearly one-half the freemen 

81 See such an attack, Freeman’s Journal, Sept. 12, 1781. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 277 


of their civic rights, and the disfranchised men certainly owned more 
than half the taxable property. In some Pennsylvania communities, 
as in some of New York, the voters were not numerous enough to 
administer the local government. Thus in Byberry township, in 
Bucks County, only three men were free from disabilities. But the 
difficulties facing a repeal were heavy. A great petition to the 
Assembly in the spring of 1784 asked for abolition of the tests, and 
even George Bryan signed it, but nothing was done. The Legislature 
met again in midsummer, and found fresh petitions, including one 
from young Quakers and others who had reached the age of eighteen 
since the tests were instituted, and had religious scruples against 
them. As the session approached its close, and many Constitution¬ 
alists started home, the moderates mustered their greatest majority, 
until on September 28, 1784, they suddenly introduced a bill re¬ 
pealing the tests. The Assembly divided evenly, Speaker Grey cast 
his deciding vote for the bill, and in high dudgeon the opposition, 
nineteen in number, marched out and left the Assembly without a 
quorum. The session thus came to a summary end. The seceding 
members issued an address, recalling that the Constitution required 
all bills to be printed, and except upon a sudden necessity, to be 
held over for passage the succeeding session. This requirement had 
often been disregarded, but the Constitutionalists were right in 
adding that “no sudden necessity exists . . . ; on the contrary, in 
a few days a new Assembly will be convened. . . .” 

The Constitutionalists objected that a repeal of the Test Act 
would let those who had done nothing in the Revolution enjoy its 
fruits, and held that so many men had opposed the war that in some 
counties they could elect candidates “who execrated the alliance be¬ 
tween the United States and his most Christian Majesty, and who 
still cherished a hope of reunion with Great Britain.” They found 
confirmation of their fears in the talk in Philadelphia of a restora¬ 
tion of the College charter, and in the Penns’ petition for a larger 
share of their old estates. 32 A bill for restoring the College charter 
and property to the former trustees was pressed just far enough in 
the summer of 1784 to elicit a tremendous uproar. Dr. Smith was 
much in evidence in the Assembly—“like a Prime Minister, his 


82 See Freeman’s Journal, September 29, 1784. Apropos of the agitation over the 
Test Act see an attack upon those who were “violent for the most unbounded for¬ 
bearance ’ and moderation, in the Freemans Journal of January 30, 1782. The 
authS dentes the Constitutionalist charges-the “frightful stories about the waste of 
publte money, the embezzlement of forfeited estates, and the purchase of city lots. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


278 

enemies said. A typical newspaper attack on the College, signed 11 A 
Plebeian,” recalled that the annulment of the Charter and seizure of 
the Proprietary’s lands had been enacted on the same day in 1779, 
as the fruits of the same principle, adding: “It was always foreseen 
that they would be attacked from the same quarter. When one falls, 
the other must totter.” The same withdrawal of the minority which 
defeated the Test Act revision also defeated the College trustees. 

The fall election in 1784 was fought out upon the Test Act and 
College charter, constitutional revision receding into the back¬ 
ground; 33 while an important part was played by the general 
economic depression, for which the Administration was blamed. The 
report of the majority of the Censors, then just issued, offered good 
ammunition against the Anti-Constitutionalist regime, and the radi¬ 
cals won so decisively that their Assembly strength was about three 
to one. 34 A public meeting in Bucks, typical of others elsewhere, 
denounced the tactics of the Anti-Constitutionalists in the former 
Assembly, and declared against the non-jurors. 35 When General An¬ 
thony Wayne led a new effort for a revision of the Test Act in 
the Legislature of 1784-85, a contemptuously adverse committee 
report was adopted 42 to 15. 

To various disturbances of the public order during Dickinson’s 
administration we need advert only briefly. The first was a riot by 
released troops of the Pennsylvania Line. These ill-paid veterans, 
like others in the national army, were offered furloughs in the spring 
of 1783, Congress wishing to dissolve the army and yet to hold 
large forces subject to recall if Great Britain did not sign the 
definitive treaty. It was impossible to pay the troops properly before 
they dispersed, and when members of the Pennsylvania Line at 
Lancaster learned this fact, their resentment broke down all dis- 

38 “Since the year 1777 the Constitution has gained many proselytes. Some have 
been seduced by offices; others have been misled by their attachment to the prin¬ 
ciples of the men who were in power. . . . Lastly, some have yielded to the Govern¬ 
ment through necessity, believing that no attempts to improve it would ever be 
revived.” Pa. Packet, Feb. 2, 1779. Graydon says (Memoirs, 307-8): “To counteract 
the Constitutionalists, the disaffected to the Revolution were invited to fall into the 
Republican ranks; and there was an agreement, or at least an understanding, among 
the lawyers, who were generally on the Republican side, neither to practise or accept 
any office under the Constitution, which in that case, they would be bound, by an 
oath, to support. But the Constitutionalists had a Roland for their Oliver. They 
had prothonotaryships, attorney-generalships, chief justiceships, and what not to 
dispose of.” 

34 Outrageous frauds were proved at the Lancaster election, which a writer in the 
Freeman’s Journal (Oct. 20) sarcastically describes: “Did we not seal up the box 
after the close of the poll? Did we not put it into a closet, either with or without a 
lock, in Mr. Hubley’s tavern? Did not numbers of us stay in the house with it from 
the most virtuous motives?” 

36 Freeman’s Journal, Nov. 10, 1784. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 279 


cipline. Some fifty, about the middle of June, set out for Philadel¬ 
phia to state their grievances to Congress. Arrived in the city, they 
were joined by five times as many discontented soldiers hanging 
about there, and all marched to the State House, where both Congress 
and the Executive Council were sitting. “I assure you it was a 
serious affair,” wrote one Councillor, “for about one-half of them 
was drunk. They kept us about three hours, and we had no military 
force to suppress them.” By the exertions of President Dickinson 
and General St. Clair, this outbreak was soon quieted, but meanwhile 
Congress had moved to Princeton in alarm. It showed a marked 
coolness for some time towards the Pennsylvania Government, which 
the Congressmen pronounced inefficient in coping with disorder. 

The Wyoming troubles a year later illustrated the unreasonable¬ 
ness and selfishness of many legislators and most Councilors. When 
in the spring of 1784 a disastrous flood rolled down the Susquehanna 
and devastated the Connecticut settlement in the Wyoming Valley, 
President Dickinson urged the Legislature to send forward prompt 
relief. Instead, some members declaring that the pushing Yankees 
should have stayed in New England out of harm’s way, the Assembly 
sent troops to take steps preparatory to the removal of the settlers, 
national arbiters having just decided that the valley belonged to 
Pennsylvania, not Connecticut. Guerrilla warfare ensued, and was 
intensified when a new force went to the scene under Colonel John 
Armstrong. The Pennsylvania claimants to the land improved by 
these industrious Connecticut folk were jubilant, and bragged in the 
press that the perpetual nuisance offered by this brawling crew of 
interlopers would be abated; while a large part of the State, in¬ 
cluding a majority of the Council, rejoiced with them. But early in 
July, when too ill to attend public gatherings, President Dickinson 
sent a warning and an appeal to the Council, pointing to the danger 
of open hostilities with Connecticut. On September n the Council 
of Censors also made an impressive remonstrance, lamenting the 
sufferings of the settlers, the opprobrium brought upon the State, the 
expense to the treasury, the prospect of a quarrel with a sister State, 
and the violation of the Articles of Confederation. Thus spurred to 
responsible action, the Legislature finally disavowed the injuries com¬ 
mitted, and took steps to make reparation. 

The Legislature of 1784-85, with its overwhelming Constitution¬ 
alist majority, surpassed any which had preceded it in the folly of 


28 o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


its measures. Its chief action was the annullment of the charter of 
the Bank of North America. This bank, founded by Robert Morris 
and chartered in the spring of 1782 by the Anti-Constitutionalists, 
had proved of almost indispensable value to the State and nation. 
It had saved the Confederation’s finances from ruin; in Pennsylvania 
it had brought specie into circulation again, and its own notes had 
as much value as silver. The demagogues among the Constitution¬ 
alists organized a characteristic campaign against it. They declared 
that it facilitated, but did not augment, circulation, and hence was 
enriching a small mercantile group at the expense of the many; that 
it was undermining public credit; that its hostility to other paper 
was causing a steady diminution in the circulating medium, whereas 
the need for more currency was a crying one; and that with its huge 
capital ($10,000,000) and small number of directors (twelve) it was 
a dangerous money machine, able to rule the State with a rod of 
iron. Could they have had a marked preponderance of power in 
1783 or 1784 the Constitutionalists would have destroyed it. Now 
their opportunity—along with general economic discontent—arrived. 
They revoked the Bank’s charter, overriding the arguments of thir¬ 
teen members who drew up a paper demonstrating the value of its 
work, and who declared that corporations ought not to be annihilated 
on caprice, by a vote of 50 to 12. The bank’s stock went below par, 
but it continued operation under a charter from Congress. 36 

A loan office was opened by the Legislature in the stead of the 
bank, and to issue more paper for depreciation. Two laws were 
then passed by a deal between representatives of the back-country 
settlers on the one hand and of certain city elements* on the other. 
These were the funding measure by which Pennsylvania agreed to 
pay the Federal debt owed to its citizens, and a land law by which 
State lands were to be sold at a price, its opponents said, much below 
the market value. A new law regulating elections was also passed, 
alleged to be much in the interest of the Constitutionalists. One of 
its provisions, however, that abolishing plural voting, was thoroughly 
sound; it made it illegal for men to vote outside the township or 
precinct in which each resided, whereas citizens before had some¬ 
times traveled long distances to cast a second ballot in the same 
election. The net effect of the bank-charter repeal, the loan office, 
funding, and land laws was highly disastrous to the Constitution- 

88 See minority protest against the repeal, Md. Journal, Oct. n, 1785. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 281 


alists. The first measure in especial produced a reaction which, as 
Paine had warned his fellow radicals, overthrew the Pennsylvania 
Constitution and assured the ratification of the Federal Constitution. 

As Dickinson’s third term drew near its expiration in 1785, the 
eyes of Pennsylvanians turned unanimously toward Franklin as his 
successor. The resignation of the State’s greatest son as American 
plenipotentiary to France was accepted by Congress March 7, 1785, 
and he had returned at once to Philadelphia, where he was received 
with every honor. In October he was unanimously elected President 
of the Executive Council. He also, in spite of his great age, was to 
serve three years, the first two with Charles Biddle as Vice-President, 
and the third with Peter Muhlenberg in that office. The State 
needed his calming hand. “It strikes me that you will find it some¬ 
what difficult to manage the two parties in Pennsylvania,” Jay wrote 
him. “It is much to be wished that union and harmony may be 
established there. . . . Unless you do it, I do not know who can.” 37 
Franklin’s wisdom and dignity impressed everyone, and he exercised 
the greater control over both parties in that he agreed with the 
extremists of neither; his demeanor to both “was so truly oily and 
ingratiating,” wrote Graydon, that it always remained doubtful to 
which he belonged. He had nominally been a Constitutionalist, 
holding the frame of government adopted in 1776 a good one, but 
the principal specific measures that he now supported were those of 
the Anti-Constitutionalists. In 1787 most Constitutionalists opposed 
the new Federal Constitution, and on that issue he was heartily with 
the Anti-Constitutionalists again. He had the further advantage that 
from the outset the two parties were so nearly balanced in the 
Assembly that an arbiter was acceptable. 38 “Neither is sure of 
carrying a point,” wrote Francis Hopkinson in March, 1786. “This 
situation excites the orators and leading men of the House to the 
most vigorous exertions.” Franklin’s success in keeping factionalism 
within bounds surprised himself, though he modestly ascribed it to 
the innate talent of Americans for sane self-government. 


but which side 


87 Jay’s Works, III, 169-170. Q „ 

38 Said a correspondent of the N. Y. Packet, Oct. 24, 1785. . , 

has a majority, this one thing is certain, that it will be so small, as not to form a 
quorum without the other. Thus will be prevented the decision of any of the mo¬ 
mentous questions peculiarly obnoxious to either party It has been said, that if the 
Constitutionalists had been able to command the same decided majority they had last 
year, they would impose such a tax on bank stock, as must necessarily involve a 
dissolution of the company; and, on the other hand, that the Republicans, if suf¬ 
ficiently strong, would proceed to a repeal, or at least a revisal, of the test laws 
and also a repeal of the lately enacted law for annulling the charter of the bank. 


282 THE AMERICAN STATES 

V. Federalist Efforts in New York 

While the years leading to the struggle over the Federal Consti¬ 
tution were thus less angry than before in Pennsylvania, political 
passions in New York showed no diminution. The fight over 
strengthening the national government opened there in 1784. Its 
inception is found in the legislative debates upon the great post- 
Revolutionary measures for adding to the powers of Congress. 

Indeed, the contest in New York over the Congressional regula¬ 
tion of commerce, and the Congressional collection of an impost 
revenue, was as fierce as in any part of the Union. Clinton, like 
Hancock on ticklish questions, was loath to commit himself, but 
though he refrained from expressing open hostility to an extension 
of the national authority over ocean trade, his real sentiments were 
well known. He insisted upon State control of the great shipping 
business which centered in New York. Both of these questions 
were squarely posed in 1784, when Congress, stung by the British 
discriminations against our commerce, in April requested authority 
for the general regulation of trade. The New York Legislature had 
already taken a hostile attitude. It had just levied a tonnage tax 
and passed its first tariff act, which that fall was followed by a second. 
Under these statutes, one custom house was established at the port 
of New York (the radical General John Lamb was the first collector) 
and another at Sag Harbor, Long Island. Many articles were made 
dutiable: a sixpence was levied on every gallon of madeira, three¬ 
pence on other wines, two-pence on rum and other spirits, and 
graded amounts on vehicles, ironware, watches, certain agricultural 
implements, and so on. A double duty was to be paid upon all 
imports owned in part or wholly by British subjects, except when 
these vessels had been built within New York State. 39 

Schuyler in the Senate and Duer in the Assembly fought these 
measures. The second, more comprehensive, and more offensive was 
vetoed by the Council of Revision, which pointed out that every 
attempt by one State to regulate trade without the concurrence of 
the others must do only harm; that the discriminating duties must 
lead to countervailing duties; and that State legislation on the sub¬ 
ject would interfere with the nation’s commercial treaties. These 
facts were evident, but the bill was nevertheless repassed over the 

89 Laws of New York, 1777-1801, I, 585, 599 ff.; II, 7 ff.; see “Memorial History of 
New York City,” III, 32-33. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 283 

veto. Thereupon Hamilton brought into play all possible instru¬ 
mentalities for influencing the Legislature to grant Congress a general 
control over ocean commerce. It was easy for him to appeal to 
those in the lower part of the State who saw British selfishness 
crippling their trade—a mass-meeting was held in New York city, 
which adopted resolutions; circulars were prepared, and corres¬ 
pondence was opened with other States; and under the Chamber of 
Commerce, headed by John Alsop, the most influential merchants 
sent a memorial to the Legislature (March 14, 1785). As a result, 
at the end of the spring session in 1785 the Legislature passed an 
act authorizing Congress for fifteen years to prohibit the import or 
export of goods in vessels of nations “not in the treaty” with us, 
and to prevent the subjects of such nations from importing any goods 
except from their own countries. A proviso was attached, however, 
forbidding the United States to collect any duties within New York 
except by legislative consent. 

This proviso brought up the related question of the impost amend¬ 
ment to the Articles of Confederation. In 1783 Congress had asked 
the States to permit it to levy and maintain a system of custom¬ 
house duties for twenty-five years, to pay the public debt. But a 
measure meeting the wishes of Congress failed in the Legislature in 
1784, and when renewed in 1785, it was defeated in the Senate, which 
was under Clinton’s close influence. The revenues collected at the 
port of New York were so large that legislators and executive officers 
were more and more unwilling to part with them. In further evi¬ 
dence of its anti-federalism, the Legislature in March changed the 
delegation in Congress. Of the four able New Yorkers sitting there, 
Jay, Walter Livingston, Lansing, and Egbert Benson, the first two 
were decidedly favorable to a strong national government, and when 
Jay was called from the floor (December 21, 1784) to be Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs to Congress, the Clintonians seized the oppor¬ 
tunity to reinforce Lansing by appointing three new men, of whom 
John Haring and Melancthon Smith held State Rights views, and 
John Lawrence alone was a federalist. 

Thinking men in New York explicitly recognized the broader im¬ 
plications of the impost question: that it was part of the battle to 
decide between a strong or a weak federal government. This recog¬ 
nition was shown in the newspaper skirmishing that accompanied 
the April elections for the Legislature in 1785. “Consideration” 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


284 

urged that the States should give Congress not only full commercial 
authority, but “all powers necessary for an active and firm Conti¬ 
nental government.” On the opposite side, “Rough Hewer, Jr.” 
(Abraham Yates) declared that all history had demonstrated that 
republicanism could flourish only in small States, and that a power¬ 
ful Continental Legislature would devour the rights of the thirteen 
commonwealths. If you put the sword and the purse into the same 
hand, however that hand might be constituted, ran the hackneyed 
argument of “Sydney,” you render it absolute; “When this is com¬ 
passed, adieu to Liberty!” Hamilton, looking beyond the impost 
amendment to a Constitutional Convention, knew that the struggle 
for the two could be waged together. 

By various devices hostile factions got their candidates into the 
field. In the middle of April a meeting of the wealthier citizens, at 
Cape’s Tavern, with Isaac Roosevelt in the chair, nominated James 
Duane for the Senate, and nine others for the Assembly, while a week 
later a committee of mechanics named Thomas Tredwell for the 
Senate, and its own list of nine for Assemblymen. Tredwell and 
eight of the mechanics’ nominees for Assemblymen were chosen. 40 
But Hamilton had played his cards so that the federalists could 
count on three trusty agents out of the Assembly delegation. One 
of these three, Robert Troup, relates that: 

Hamilton had no idea that the Legislature could be prevailed upon to adopt the 
system as recommended by Congress, neither had he any partiality for a commercial 
convention, otherwise than as a stepping stone to a general convention to form a 
general Constitution. In pursuance of his plan, the late Mr. Duer, the late Colonel 
Malcolm, and myself, were sent to the State Legislature as part of the city delega¬ 
tion, and we were to make every possible effort to accomplish Hamilton’s objects. 

Duer was a man of commanding eloquence. He went to the Legislature and pressed 
totis viribus the grant of the impost agreeably to the requisition of Congress. We 
failed in obtaining it. We bent all our strength in the appointment of commissioners 
to attend the commercial convention, in which we were successful. The commis¬ 
sioners were instructed to report their proceedings to the next Legislature. Hamilton 
was appointed one of them. Thus it was, that he was the principal agent to turn the 
State to a course of policy that saved our country from incalculable mischiefs. . . . 


At the spring session in 1786, Malcolm, Troup, Duer, and other 
Assemblymen, with Schuyler in the Senate, put forth every exertion 
for the impost amendment. At the same time, public meetings were 
held in various towns. The Legislature was bombarded with peti¬ 
tions. The assent which other States had given to the amendment 
was so nearly unanimous that, although some of the measures carry¬ 
ing it required modification, the eyes of public-spirited men every- 

40 N. Y. Packet, April 18 and 25, May 2, 1785. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 285 

where were fastened upon New York: as it approved or disapproved, 
the amendment would carry or fail. 

The first reverse came April 13, 1786, when John Lansing had the 
impost bill amended in the Assembly, 33 to 22, in such manner as 
to make the duties collectable by the State, not by national officers. 
This effectually mangled it. Two days later the bill reached its third 
reading. Duer made an heroic effort to restore it, proposing that 
since national uniformity in the collection of duties was desirable, 
the Legislature should agree that, whenever Congress should devise 
a uniform set of regulations, it would adopt them by law, but this 
compromise was defeated, 32 to 21. All the New York city and 
county members who voted stood by Duer, as did half the Albany 
members, and a group of Assemblymen from Long Island and Staten 
Island. Later in the month Schuyler in the Senate similarly tried to 
amend the bill so that it would grant the United States power to 
issue regulations for the collection, but was also beaten, 10 to 6. 
On May 4 the measure became law, in such form that New York 
retained the sole right to levy and receive duties, and was also to be 
allowed to pay over the revenue in State bills of credit, thus opening 
the way to confusion of accounts and evasion of the burden. Essen¬ 
tially, the long battle was lost, and Congress rebuffed, for some 
States had assented only upon condition that the United States 
should be allowed everywhere to collect the impost direct. 41 

An interesting satire upon the kind of appeal by which demagogues 
defeated the impost plan appeared in a New York paper early in 
April. An attempt to turn the sword of the State Rights men against 
themselves, it catches just the tone of a Clintonian stump-speaker 
playing upon ignorance, class-feeling, and pocket timidity: 42 

For Congress put Legislature, and then let a cunning clam-catcher, on the south 
side of Queens County, harangue his Rockaway neighbors, thus: Gemmen, I say we 
must be careful how we give power to Legislature; let us keep the staff in our own 
hands. Look to your chink, neighbors; keep the loaf under the arm; the sword and 
the purse! Odd zoogers, it makes one cold again! Let Legislature have a power to 
march us up to the Mohawk country to be scalped, and then pay our own charges out 
of our own pockets, into the bargain! Ha! No, no, none of that fun for me. I 
say let us give Legislature no power; or to cut the matter short, have none at all; 
we have no occasion for any; let every town do its own business. What business 
have we to raise money to defend the frontiers? Let the northern men take care of 
themselves; every hog eat his own apple, I say. Every county and every town stick 
to itself and mind its own business. Legislature wastes money like water. They 
have given, I hear, 500 good dollars to some lawyers, for nothing but to tub up old 
fusty books about a pack of trumpery that we have no use for. Can’t we meet and 
make our own laws, to prevent undersized Rams running at large, and the Hogs from 

41 Legislative Journals, 1786. 

43 Quoted in Mass. Centinel, April 22, 1786. 


286 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


digging up the clam flats? What the deuce do we want of any more? They have 
feathered their nests pretty well, faith; 500 hard dollars for nothing! It would take 
800 as fat turkeys as ever catched grasshoppers on Hempstead Plain, to make up this 
swinging sum. Fine economy truly, just like Congress with their ambassadors to 
outlandish places! . . . The rich always hate the poor. There is not a fat farmer in 
all North Hempstead, that will give a poor Rockaway man a boiling of pork, until 
he has earned it by the sweat of his brow. I say let us be ourselves, and make our 
own town laws; then I would be for passing a law, that dried clams should he received 
in full payment for all old debts; but to make it good, so as to fetch the pork out of 
them overgrown fellows’ cellars, I would pass a law to make dried clams a tender in 
all cases whatsoever. 

In despair, Congress at once passed a resolution asking New York 
to reconsider its action, and amend the impost measure. This was 
in August, 1786, and the Legislature having adjourned, a special 
session would be necessary. Clinton refused to call it on the ground 
that the Constitution forbade him to do so except in an emergency, 
and that he saw none. A critic in the Daily Advertiser voiced the 
federalist view when he asked if it were not an emergency to have 
the life of the national government imperiled, and civil war impend¬ 
ing. 43 

Had political factions been as well developed in New York by 
1786 as in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, the State election that 
year would have turned squarely upon the impost issue. But Gover¬ 
nor Clinton, finishing his third triennial term, encountered virtually 
no opposition in his spring campaign for reelection. The commercial 
men in the southern senatorial district, led by Hamilton, Troup, 
and Duer, would have liked to see Jay in the Governor’s chair. 
Schuyler also wrote from Albany pressing Jay to run. The prospect 
for his success was by no means dark. Clinton’s appointment of a 
host of incompetent political spoilsmen to office, his hostility to 
Congress, and the fact that he was not “safe” at a time when paper 
money folly was abroad, could all be used against him. It was 
also represented to Jay that no other candidate against Clinton was 
really available. In the counties east of the Hudson, Chancellor 
Livingston would have had the support of a considerable body of 
intelligent men, but the Livingston family had made such a luke¬ 
warm record in the Revolution that his chances elsewhere were hope¬ 
less. Schuyler might have been mentioned, but although he would 
have run well about Albany, and wherever else Burgoyne’s invasion 
was vividly remembered, he would have failed utterly in the southern 
part of the State. 44 However, Jay flatly refused. The political 
condition of New York was not really desperate, he explained, and 

43 Aug. 31, 1786, 

44 See Hamilton, “Hist. Republic,” III, 172-73. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 287 

until it was, he could not feel justified in deserting his supervision 
of the foreign affairs of the nation. Always modest, always deeply 
conscientious, he added that inasmuch as his post was more laborious 
than Governor Clinton’s, paid less, and carried less honor, he would 
be accused of self-seeking if he dropped it to seize at the Governor¬ 
ship. Clinton was quietly reelected. 

In New York city, interest in the contest centered in the cam¬ 
paign of Hamilton for the Assembly. Though industriously opposed 
by the Clintonians, the gallant young lawyer was so well supported 
by the business vote that he took fourth place in the list of nine 
chosen. He had a number of fairly sturdy federalist supporters. 45 

The session of 1787, opening in January in New York city, was 
the scene of a series of defeats for the conservative Whigs at the 
hands of the radicals, but out of these defeats they plucked victory. 
Governor Clinton opened it with a non-committal speech informing 
the Legislature of the request of Congress with regard to the impost, 
and of his reasons for refusing a special session. The Assembly 
committee appointed to draft a reply was headed by Hamilton, and 
its polite rejoinder made no reference to this subject. But the 
Governor’s defenders, led by Hamilton’s friends Varick and Malcolm, 
forced a debate on the subject, did as much as they could to defend 
Clinton’s excuse from Hamilton’s attacks, and finally amended the 
reply to include a word of commendation for his constitutional 
scruples. Hamilton then succeeded in having the laws which con¬ 
travened the treaty with England referred to another committee of 
which he was chairman, and reported a bill for their repeal, using 
the general formula which Congress had proposed to the States for 
this purpose. The Trespass Act, and an act relating to debts due 
to loyalists, were the chief measures against which the British had 
protested. He carried the bill to the Assembly (April 17), and 
aroused so much popular support for it that Jay wrote John Adams 
that New York was growing decidedly more humane towards the 
Tories. Then he had the mortification of seeing it fail in the Senate. 

One gain for the loyalists and the neutrals of the war, however, 
was achieved. The Federalists under Hamilton and Schuyler were 
able to repeal the act which had disfranchised certain adherents of 
the Crown, and to secure them full rights at future elections. In 
this Malcolm supported Hamilton vigorously, and the measure was 


45 Leake, “Lamb,” 301-2. 


288 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


ready for approval by the Council of Revision on February 3. The 
temper of the State was indeed slowly changing, as Jay said; there 
was a tendency to let the harsh laws fall into disuse, and many 
exiles were now returning to meet, not coats of tar and feathers, 
but a hearty welcome. 46 

Meanwhile, there had been brought up the most important measure 
of the session, a bill for granting the impost in full and free measure. 
Hamilton made for it one of the greatest speeches of his life. He 
derided the idea that a powerful Congress would ever tyrannize over 
the States. Pointing to the frequent failure of the States to pay 
their quotas of the Congressional requisitions, and to the slenderness 
of the national revenue, he showed how this worthless financial system 
put an unfair burden upon New York, which had displayed great 
faithfulness in meeting its quotas. He recalled the hostility of Con¬ 
necticut and New Jersey to New York, and the eagerness of foreign 
enemies to take advantage of disunion. He did not deny the fact on 
which Clinton and many others based their main objection, that the 
introduction of a set of national tax collectors within the State would 
impair its sovereignty. In fact, he admitted it with a directness 
which some Congressional politicians deplored; but he showed that 
its consequences would be salutary, not injurious. If New York 
insisted upon modifying the Congressional plan so as to place the 
collection of the impost in the hands of the State agents, he argued, 
the weary task of gaining State assent to it would have to begin 
again; in order to reassure one nervous State, ought eleven others to 
be compelled to alter their enactments or plans? Hamilton’s speech, 
as Chancellor Kent wrote years later, received praise from all: 

I well remember how much it was admired for the comprehensive views which it 
took of the state of the nation, the warm appeals which it made to the public patriot¬ 
ism, the imminent perils which it pointed out, and the absolute necessity which it 
showed of some such financial measure to rescue the nation from utter ruin and 
disgrace. [Kent’s “Memoirs and Letters,” 297.] 

Many of the most distinguished men in the State and nation (the 
Congress then being in the city) were in the halls or galleries await¬ 
ing the Legislature’s decision. The labor of the merchants, the New 
York City Assemblymen, the newspaper essayists, was in vain. On 
the final vote the Clintonians rallied 36 votes against 21 for the 

48 Legislative Journals. Hamilton three years earlier had lamented the forced exodus 
of many merchants, carrying eight or ten thousand guineas apiece, and had predicted 
that the State would feel the effects of the popular frenzy for twenty years. Living- 

ctnti 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 289 

impost plan. “It is whispered,” the Daily Advertiser ironically 
said, 47 “that the Governor is in secret an anti-impost man.” Clinton 
doubtless thought himself patriotic in his attitude, an attitude much 
like that of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, and other 
elder statesmen. More than one utterance of his might be quoted 
to show a real solicitude for the Union—in 1784, for example, he had 
favored giving Congress power to counteract the British commercial 
decrees; and an astonishingly large number of intelligent New 
Yorkers, including, we have seen, Hamilton’s intimates Varick and 
Malcolm, shared his State Rights prejudices. But the stubbornness 
which Hamilton thought a reproach against his character made him 
in this instance blind to the truer patriotism. 

Like the State Rights leaders of Rhode Island, those of New 
York made little effort to justify their acts, knowing they could not 
meet Hamilton’s arguments. It was truthfully said that “the impost 
was strangled by a band of mutes.” But against these dark clouds 
a bright rainbow was already being bent, as Chancellor Livingston 
perhaps saw when he sent Hamilton (March 5) his congratulations, 
not his condolences. It was clear that the only hope for a vigorous 
Union lay in the approaching Constitutional Convention, and in 
showing the impotence of the old governmental system, the anti¬ 
federalists solidified the federalists behind new demands. Clinton 
overreached himself. Hamilton had returned from the commercial 
convention at Annapolis the previous September exuberant with 
hope for a new national compact, and the Legislature’s narrow and 
short-sighted action only turned men’s gaze to the gathering at 
Philadelphia, now less than three months away. 

The Continental Congress had met in New York city February 2, 
1787, and had elected St. Clair its president. The honest Scotch 
soldier, though the chief representative of the majesty of the republic, 
held an empty office; while in the same building was Governor Clin¬ 
ton, busy performing many duties and dispensing a wide patronage. 
Clinton treated Congress with condescension, and some of his lieuten¬ 
ants regarded it as an intruder on the soil of the State. At the same 
time, the Governor privately declared that the Articles of Confedera¬ 
tion were sufficient for the purposes of the nation, or at most required 
only slight amendment; and that the deputies to Annapolis should 
have been content with the announced object of their gathering. He 


47 March 3, 1787. 


290 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


thought a Constitutional Convention likely to impress the people 
with a sense of evils which did not exist, and to increase the public 
confusion. Hamilton hospitably threw his house open to members 
of Congress, where he argued at length for a more perfect Union 
until he won over a number of wavering men; of Rufus King of 
Massachusetts he observed, “I revolutionized his mind.” Moreover, 
his influence spread like a leaven throughout the State. 

Hamilton evinced his political dexterity when he chose the day 
after the impost vote to introduce in the Legislature a motion in¬ 
structing the New York delegation in Congress to support a Consti¬ 
tutional Convention. This Convention, said the resolution, should 
revise the Articles by such amendments as a majority might think 
necessary. The motion passed the Assembly without difficulty, and 
the Senate (where the Clintonians, led by Abraham Yates and John 
Haring, tried to hamstring it) by a majority of one. The Legislature 
of course struck out the grant of permission to a mere majority in 
the Convention to change the Articles as they pleased; but Yates 
failed to carry a stipulation that all changes must be consonant with 
the New York Constitution. The Legislature then appointed three 
delegates to the proposed Convention. Hamilton, the only federalist, 
was elected with two dissenting votes; Justice Robert Yates, a popu¬ 
lar Albany citizen, unanimously; and the unpopular John Lansing in 
the face of heavy opposition. Perceiving the dangers in a delega¬ 
tion so decisively anti-federalist, Hamilton essayed to enlarge it by 
two additional men, naming Jay, Duane, Egbert Benson, and Chan¬ 
cellor Livingston as a list from which the selection might be made. 
Once more the Assembly was with him, but Clinton’s influence in the 
Senate defeated the proposal. 48 

We need not follow in detail New York’s part in the making or 
the acceptance of the Constitution. How Yates and Lansing quitted 
the Federal Convention in the midst of its work, a step beyond doubt 
approved by Governor Clinton; how Hamilton, strongly supported 

48 “It is currently reported and believed,” says the N. Y. Advertiser of July 21, 
1787, “that his excellency Governor Clinton has. in public company, without reserve, 
reprobated the appointment of the Convention, and predicted a mischievous issue of 
that measure. His observations are said to be to this effect:—that the present con¬ 
federation is, in itself, equal to the purposes of the Union:—-That the appointment of 
a Convention is calculated to impress the people with an idea of evils which do not 
exist:—therefore, that in all probability the result of their deliberations, whatever it 
might be, would only serve to throw the community into confusion.” The Pa. Packet 
of Aug. 3 adds: “A gentleman from New York informs us that the anti-federal dis- 
position of a great officer of that State has seriously alarmed the citizens, as every 
’ appearance of opposition to the important measure upon which the people have 
reposed their hopes creates a painful anticipation of anarchy and division.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 291 

in New York city, at once came into the open and attacked the 
Governor; how while Yates and Lansing did all they could to dis¬ 
credit the proposed Constitution, Hamilton, Livingston, and Jay 
organized a powerful phalanx of advocates; how an association of 
radicals, headed by General John Lamb, was formed in defense of 
State Rights; how Hamilton characteristically carried the war into 
the enemy camp, conceiving the idea of “The Federalist” and during 
the autumn and winter writing most of its papers—this is an old 
story. It is also an old story how the State convention which met in 
June, 1788, to debate ratification, contained at least two avowed 
anti-federalists to every federalist; how Hamilton presented the 
chief arguments to break down their opposition, was joined first by 
one man and then another, and finally, in the conversion of 
Melancthon Smith, the foremost anti-federalist debater, won the 
victory. Clinton, who presided over the ratifying convention, ex¬ 
pressed himself as plainly against the Constitution as political pru¬ 
dence allowed, refused to imitate Governor Hancock in compromis¬ 
ing, and was beaten on a fair field. “The fact is,” one observer wrote 
of New York city, “that the sense and property here are universally 
in favor.” 48a The Governor kept up the fight after all hope of 
success was lost, and a few days after ratification, his supporters in 
the Convention weakened the acceptance by proposing a second 
Federal gathering for considering the amendments offered by the 
various States. In the closing days of the year the Clintonians in 
the Legislature also seized a final opportunity to strike at Hamilton 
by refusing to include him among the delegates who were chosen to 
sit in the Continental Congress till the new Constitution came into 
effect. A short time thereafter he was in Washington’s Cabinet, out 
of reach of their malice. 

VI. Federalist Efforts in Pennsylvania 

In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the three great achievements of 
Franklin’s Administration, the modification of the Test Act, the 
restoration of the charter of the Bank of North America, and the 
ratification of the Constitution, had been rapidly carried through. 
This was done in a reaction against the outrageous acts of the radical 
Constitutionalists in 1785, and especially against their attempted de¬ 
struction of the Bank. For all three achievements President Frank- 

48m Corr. and Journals of S. B. Webb, III, 89-90. 


2Q2 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


lin, though an octogenarian and half disabled by gallstones, exerte< 
himself energetically, taking action for the first, indeed, as soon a: 
elected. A great number of the non-jurors of Philadelphia placed i 
petition before the Executive Council on November 7, 1785, asking 
liberation from “that state of disgraceful slavery” in which the) 
were held by the Test Act. The next day Franklin and the Council 
sent a message to the Legislature asking for a revision of the 
obnoxious legislation. At the commencement of March, 1786, the 
bill reached a third reading. Its progress had been accompanied by 
much agitation and suspense, and a great concourse of people crowded 
the legislative gallery and waited in the street outside. A number of 
petitions had been received in opposition, including several from 
outlying counties in such threatening language that they had been 
thrown under the table. The measure passed, 45 to 23, Robert 
Morris and George Clymer having the gratification of voting for it. 49 
Though the old oath, obnoxious in demanding support of the Penn¬ 
sylvania Constitution, was abolished, every voter might still be re¬ 
quired to swear that he had abandoned allegiance to George III, 
that he gave complete loyalty to Pennsylvania, and that since the 
Declaration of Independence he had not aided the British forces. 

During 1787 the bank was rechartered for fourteen years. 
Franklin was an earnest believer both in banking and in this 
particular institution, which was ably and prudently conducted. 
Since no man of sense could now deny the bank’s merits, greater 
political feeling was aroused during the session by an effort of the 
Constitutionalists to transfer the State capital to Harrisburg, a bill 
being actually taken up to remove it to this more central site. 
Harrisburg, a hundred miles northwest of Philadelphia, was only a 
few years old, though the chief town of Dauphin County, and had 
less than a hundred houses. The chief advocate of removal was the 
rising Constitutionalist leader Findley, who had come to the Penn¬ 
sylvania frontier from Ireland in 1763, and had grown up with the 
virtues and prejudices of the backwoods. Federalists were right in 
saying that one of Findley’s motives was his desire to keep the 
Legislature away from the influence of Congress, which was reported 
about to return to Philadelphia. Harrisburg was a Constitutionalist 
center, and the Assembly there would be in contact with the rough 
fringes of civilization, not with the wealth, education, and con- 

49 Minutes Supreme Executive Council, XIV; N. Y. Packet Dec i 178c;* Pa 
Packet, March 6, 1786. ' ec ‘ x » ra * 



POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 293 

servatism of the American metropolis. It happened that Dauphin 
was one of the four counties in which the Germans were most numer¬ 
ous, the others being Lancaster, York, and Northampton, and the 
Germans, who usually had about one-fifth the membership of the 
Assembly, were not averse to the change. But Findley’s shrewd 
move failed, and not for another generation did Harrisburg become 
the fixed capital. 50 

The same year witnessed the conversion of the Anti-Constitution¬ 
alist party of Dickinson, Morris, and Wayne into a party supporting 
the new Federal compact, and the Constitutionalist party of Bryan 
and Findley into a body opposing it. Old party lines were to a 
limited extent obliterated. Many men, Franklin among them, 
desired a Federal Constitution but no new State Constitution. A few 
perhaps wanted a new State Constitution and no Federal Constitu¬ 
tion. But on the whole, the party opposing progress along the whole 
line was the Constitutionalists, who had always feared a new State 
instrument, the non-jurors, the College, and the Bank, and who now 
conjured up a host of fears regarding the Federal Convention. 

On September 18, 1787, President Franklin feebly walked into 
the Assembly hall, and laid the Constitution before the legislators. 
On the morning of the 29th, the next to the last day of the session, 
Clymer moved to refer the Constitution to a State convention, and 
on behalf of the minority, Whitehill requested postponement of the 
question till afternoon. But when the afternoon came the minority 
members, nineteen in number, failed to attend, and refusing to heed 
an official summons, blocked a quorum. The friends of the Constitu¬ 
tion in the Assembly and city were outraged by this trick. Accord¬ 
ingly, a party gathered at dawn the next day, seized two of the 
delinquents, just enough to make a quorum, at their lodgings, and 
dragged them into their seats. The State convention was then 
called, to the disgust of the seceding nineteen. Philadelphia, like 
New York city, was overwhelmingly for the Constitution, and even 
President Franklin, placed on the anti-federalist ticket for the Con¬ 
vention as a decoy, received less than one-fifth as many votes in the 
city as the highest federalist candidate—235 as against 1215. The 
number of members elected to the Convention was the same as the 
number of legislators. In four counties, Lancaster, Berks, West¬ 
moreland, and Dauphin, the anti-federalists made gains over their 

BO N. Y. Advertiser, March 13, 1787; Md. Journal, March 13, 30. 


294 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


showing in the Legislature, and in three, Northumberland, Washing¬ 
ton, and Franklin, suffered losses. 51 

After a session of three weeks, the Pennsylvania Convention rati¬ 
fied the Constitution by a vote of 46 to 23, the second ratification it 
received. The news, announced on December 13, 1787, was greeted 
with joy by the federalists and with sullen anger by the anti¬ 
federalists. One reason for the joy was that it made a new State 
Constitution almost imperative, and that the Constitutionalists had 
lost their long fight. Under Judge Bryan, Findley, Whitehill, and 
Smillie, they salved their discomfiture by the immediate publication 
of an address to the people. They alleged that the secrecy in which 
the new Federal instrument had been drawn up made it suspicious; 
that the people and Legislature had been frightened into consenting 
to a State convention by unfounded talk about impending anarchy; 
that the election of this Convention, set for an absurdly early date, 
had called out only 13,000 of the 70,000 voters; and that the 46 
members who had ratified the Constitution represented but 6800 
freemen. In short, they used arguments against the Federal instru¬ 
ment amusingly similar to the arguments which Dickinson and his 
followers had employed against the new State instrument in 1776-77. 

In preparation for the Congressional elections in the fall of 1788, 
the anti-federalists, responding to a circular letter sent out from 
Carlisle, met at Harrisburg at the beginning of September to frame 
a ticket and a plan of action. Thirty-three delegates attended from 
thirteen counties, including Judge Bryan, Assemblyman Whitehill, 
and Albert Gallatin, an ardent young Swiss who had taken a promi¬ 
nent anti-federalist part in the ratifying convention. Their ostensible 
purpose was to propose amendments to the Federal Constitution, and 
draft petitions to be circulated in support of them; but then nar¬ 
rower party aims were the more important. The course they decided 
upon was caution itself. They knew that popular sentiment was 
unfavorable to them. Some delegates first proposed that they bring 
forward a ticket with three federalist and five anti-federalist candi¬ 
dates for Congress, in the hope of splitting the federalist vote. Even 
this seemed risky, and a balance was struck between the two parties, 
four of each composing the ticket. Pains were taken, moreover, to 
see that two of the federalists thus induced to accept an anti¬ 
federalist Congressional nomination were of German blood—Daniel 

61 McMaster and Stone, Pa., and the Fed. Const., 1787-88; S. B. Harding in 
Amer. Hist. Assn. Report, 1894, p. 370 ff. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 295 

Heister, who had been a brigadier of militia, and Peter Muhlenberg, 
the patriot parson who had told his congregation at the beginning 
of the Revolution that there was a time to fight as well as to pray, 
and had fought so well that he became a major-general. The 
federalists, on the other hand, named a straight party ticket. The 
result was decisive. When the polls closed in the last week of 
November, it was found that not one of the four anti-federalists 
had been elected. . The balloting was not by districts, but by a 
general State election, and a Philadelphia paper thus summarized 
the result: 52 

Six of the federalists in the federal ticket, and two German federalists in the anti- 
federal ticket, are the successful candidates. The two latter gentlemen were put high 
in the return by the general voice of the Germans, joined by some of the federalists; 
and it is a very remarkable proof of the strength of the federal interest, that the two 
unsuccessful candidates in the federal ticket, though thrown out by the two federal 
German competitors, were yet above all the remainder, both federal and anti-federal 
characters, in the opposition ticket. 

The Legislature elected the fall of 1788 was strongly federalist 
and Anti-Constitutionalist. It at once chose two federalists as 
United States Senators—Robert Morris, and William Maclay, 
remembered as author of a famous political diary. Franklin’s term 
having expired, it further emphasized the federalist character of 
Pennsylvania by electing Thomas Mifflin and George Ross as Presi¬ 
dent and Vice-President of the State. Mifflin had attained the rank 
of major-general in the war, had later been president of the Conti¬ 
nental Congress, and had sat in the Constitutional Convention. The 
Legislature then, early in 1789, turned its attention to new internal 
reforms. In March it took the first of the steps which gave Pennsyl¬ 
vania her Constitutional Convention of 1790. This action was 
accompanied by the long overdue, and now almost too late, revival 
of the College under its old charter. Provost Smith, who had labored 
indefatigably for this result, was in the city to receive what he 
always called “my college.” But its old faculty and equiment, its 
traditions and spirit, were gone, and to build them up seemed a 
heart-breaking task. 

As in Pennsylvania, so in New York the moderate or conservative 
Whigs in State affairs had become federalists in national affairs, and 
the radical Whigs had largely become anti-federalists. At the elec¬ 
tion of one-fourth the State Senate in 1788—a quarter of the upper 

62 Pa. Journal, Dec. 20, 1788; see also Pa. Journal, Nov. 29; Pa. Packet, Sept. 13, 
Oct. 2; and Mcl. Journal, Sept. 23, 1788. 


296 THE AMERICAN STATES 

chamber was renewed annually—the federalists were able to obtain a 
small but decisive preponderance in that body. In New York 
county the federalist candidates for the Assembly polled as many as 
2375 votes, while the vote of the anti-federalists ranged from 1000 
to 1500. But up-State the anti-federalists retained the advantage, 
electing their Assemblymen even in Albany and Montgomery Coun¬ 
ties, where Schuyler had much influence. 53 The anti-federalist com¬ 
plexion of the Assembly was indicated by its December election of 
delegates to the last Continental Congress, when Hamilton received 
only 22 votes, and Abraham Yates 34. But it was an important 
achievement for the federalists to gain control of one legislative 
branch, as events soon proved. 

Before the Legislature of 1789 met, Clinton’s partisans were con¬ 
fident that they were strong enough in both chambers to elect two 
anti-federalists as United States Senators. Had the chambers sat 
jointly, they could have done so. But there was no rule as to the 
manner of election, and the federalists in the Senate insisted that 
it must be concurrent. They held to this position against all pleas 
and arguments, and the session ended with no choice. The same 
disagreement prevented the choice of any Presidential electors, so 
that New York did not vote for Washington. Much rancor arose 
from this deadlock, each side bitterly blaming the other. The 
federalists who comprised the wealth and culture of New York city 
knew that they risked losing the choice of their metropolis as the 
temporary seat of the national government, and Knox wrote Wash¬ 
ington praising their “honorable firmness—hazarding the removal 
from New York rather than saddle the Government with two anti- 
federal Senators.” Schuyler brought forward a sensible compromise, 
suggesting that each house should nominate two Senators, and if the 
nominations were different, the Senate should choose one of the men 
named by the House, and the House one of those named by the 
Senate; the same plan to apply to the choosing of electors. But the 
Clintonians wanted all or nothing. 54 

This drawn contest was in one light the opening skirmish in the 
State election of 1789 for Governor and other officers, as pitched a 
political battle as New York ever saw. Clinton approached the 
campaign for his fifth term with a confidence bred by his past vic¬ 
tories, his popularity, and his well-marshaled army of appointees. 

M N. Y. Journal, June 5, 1788. 

64 N. Y. Advertiser, April 7, 1789. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 297 

Hamilton, Schuyler, Jay, and Chancellor Livingston hoped to over¬ 
turn the State and seat a Governor friendly to federalism, but they 
did not underrate the difficulty of the task. Clinton was as forceful 
and genial as ever; though Hamilton could not remember a single 
useful measure since 1783 for which the State was indebted to him, 
most people thought him a good Governor; and he was a born 
fighter. It was true, as Schuyler said, that he had misused his 
patronage. But the important fact was that he had more of it 
than any other American official. Gouverneur Morris says that 
office-hunting, which disappeared during the war, became a raging 
disease at its end, and in every county, Clinton had grateful hench¬ 
men, civil and military. Whom should the federalists choose to meet 
him? Jay, Hamilton, and Schuyler all looked forward to Federal 
preferment. The New York city friends of Chief Justice Richard 
Morris proposed that deserving jurist and old-school gentleman. 
Up-State, the friends of Pierre Van Cortlandt pointed out that he 
had always been Lieutenant-Governor and deserved promotion. 

But the chances of success were so slender that the federalists 
imitated their opponents in Pennsylvania, and resorted to stratagem. 
At Bardin’s Tavern in New York city on February n, 1789, a meet¬ 
ing of several hundred of the party, presided over by a merchant 
named Constable, with Hamilton, Troup, Duer, Aaron Burr, and 
other leaders present, resolved upon trying to divide the anti¬ 
federalist vote. That is, they decided upon Robert Yates as nominee. 
Yates had resigned from the Constitutional Convention and had 
opposed the Constitution at home, but he had since, in a charge to a 
jury which received wide publicity, delivered himself of a cordial 
exhortation to support it; and he hence seemed available. Pierre 
Van Cortlandt was unanimously endorsed for Lieutenant-Governor. 
A committee including the four young men just named was appointed 
to correspond with other counties for the promotion of these candi¬ 
dacies. Nine days later Hamilton published a newspaper appeal to 
the voters in behalf of Yates which is one of the shrewdest, most 
tactful productions of his pen. 55 It was necessary, he stated, that 
the next Governor should be free from any temptation to embarrass 
the national government, whether that temptation arose from a 
preference for smaller confederacies, from personal ambition, from 
an impatience of the restraints of national authority, from a fear of 


65 N. Y. Advertiser, Feb. 20, 1789. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


298 

Federal domination, or from mortification caused by political dis¬ 
appointments. A surly Governor might not only hamper the 
Federal Government, but bring down upon New York the ill-will of 
other States. It was desirable to find a Governor who would also 
moderate factional spirit, and heal the unhappy divisions of the 
past; since in addition to the old parties in New York the Constitu¬ 
tional Convention had given birth to two new and more extensive 
parties. Nothing was more essential, apart from the choice of a man 
who would keep nation and State in harmony, than to settle upon 
one who would mollify the existing resentments. Where could he 
be found? Very courteously, Hamilton referred to the eminent 
merits of Lieutenant-Governor Van Cortlandt and Chief Justice 
Morris, both federalists. But— 

Had it been agreed to support either of them for the office of Governor there would 
have been reason to fear, that the measure would have been imputed to party, and 
not to a desire of relieving our country from the evils they experience from the heats 
of party. It appeared, therefore, most desirable to select some man of the opposite 
party, in whose integrity, patriotism, and temper, confidence might justly be placed; 
however little his political opinions on the question lately agitated, might be approved 
by those who were assembled. . . . 

The federalists willingly followed Hamilton, Troup, and Duer. 
On February 23 a larger meeting was held in the city, with many 
important merchants present, and though its purpose was to nominate 
a man for Congress, its sense was taken upon the Governorship, 
with the result that only a dozen objected to Yates. At a third 
meeting a few days later the choice of Yates was again almost 
unanimously approved. Indeed, he was thoroughly qualified. Born 
in Schenectady and educated in New York city, he had been admitted 
to the bar fifteen years before the Revolution. His services in the 
war had been varied. He wrote patriotic essays, was a member of the 
Committee of Safety, for a time had charge of military operations 
under the Provincial Congress, helped block the Hudson against 
Howe’s fleet, and assisted Schuyler in drawing plans for the defense 
of upper New York. Becoming a judge of the Supreme Court in 
1777, he distinguished himself by his insistence on impartial justice 
for men accused of Toryism, and displayed a fine independence when 
he scorned the Legislature’s threat of impeachment for this stand. 
He had also been one of the Council of Administration which 
governed southern New York for a short period after the British 
evacuation. If Clinton can be called the Hampden of the Revolu¬ 
tion in New York, we are told, Yates was its Pym; and though both 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 299 


titles are inflated, Yates was an able, sturdy patriot, whose record 
was marred only by his greed for office. 

At an early date, gatherings in various parts of the State had 
renominated Clinton and Van Cortlandt for the anti-federalists. By 
the end of February both parties had held many public rallies, and 
the attacks and counter-attacks were becoming intense. Marshaled 
behind Yates and his coalition were John Jay, not too busy with 
foreign affairs to lend active support; Chancellor Livingston, who in 
a few weeks would administer the oath of office to Washington; and 
James Duane, who had been made first Mayor of New York in 
1784, and exerted nearly as much influence there as Livingston did 
east of the upper Hudson. Duer and Burr gave their assistance, and 
in Albany County, Schuyler, who hoped to be United States Senator. 
Behind Clinton was ranged a less distinguished but formidable 
group. Melancthon Smith, a fine debater and careful student of 
political history, who had for a time led the opposition to the Con¬ 
stitution in the Poughkeepsie Convention, was still with the Gover¬ 
nor, and so were John Lansing and Gilbert Livingston. 56 

No weapon that could be used against Governor Clinton was left 
ungrasped. It was asserted that he had hoarded his “immense 
salary,” and that his niggardliness had prevented him from assuming 
a decent dignity, or offering a decent hospitality, so that in his dozen 
years of service he had accumulated not less than £30,000. This 
was just the reverse of the argument that Massachusetts federalists 
used against Hancock. Hamilton declared he found fault, not that 
the Governor was frugal, but that he was penurious. When Clinton’s 
overdue accounts were settled in 1782, the State had paid him more 
than £8000, and his subsequent salary had been £9000, of which, 
said Hamilton, his mode of living left no doubt that he had saved 
half; computing the interest for six years, the Governor’s fortune 
could not be much short of £20,000. Recalling how during thd 
sojourn of Congress in the city Clinton had done almost nothing to 
make its members welcome, Hamilton—himself the soul of hospi¬ 
tality, and careless of money to a fault—accused him of failure to 
discharge an important official duty. Indeed, Clinton had only once 
reached deep into his pocket, that once being when just after the 
British evacuation of New York he gave a dinner to Washington and 

M See N. Y. Journal and Advertiser, February and March; Mass. Centmel, March 
4 . 1789. 


3 oo THE AMERICAN STATES 

other generals, Luzerne, the French envoy, and a crowd of other 
gentlemen. Unfortunately, some federalists exaggerated the charge. 57 

Clinton was also charged with domineering over the Council of 
Appointment and prostituting its powers for partisan objects. The 
Constitution did not state whether the Governor, who with four 
Senators composed the Council, was to have the sole, or merely a 
concurrent, power in nominating State officers; he had no vote save 
in case of a tie. Gouverneur Morris has praised Clinton for the 
position he took. “Soon after the peace, an attempt at nomination 
was made by members of the Council; to this the opposition of 
Clinton was characteristically firm; he had the honorable pride to 
defend the rights of his office, and hold his share of Constitutional 
responsibility.” Hamilton blamed him: “he has constantly claimed 
the right of previous nomination, and we are greatly misinformed if 
he has not extensively practiced upon that pretension. The exercise 
of such a power places the choice essentially in the Governor.” It 
almost did so, for he could repeat his nominations indefinitely. But 
Clinton was right, and had done both what was best for the State, 
and what Jay, in writing the Constitution, seems to have intended 
should be done. Where Clinton was really assailable was in the 
bad character of some nominations, and in his anti-federalism. 

For their part, the Clintonians made the most of Yates’s turncoat 
tactics, imputing to him a lack of principle. They stigmatized the 
federalists as an aristocratic party, and raised the cry of a con¬ 
spiracy of propertied men to oppress the poor. “New York is a 
very important State,” wrote “A Yeoman”; “and the high-flyers do 
not like to see so great a number of its citizens dissatisfied with any 
part of the new Constitution. They think, if they can once get 
Governor Clinton out of the way, we will forget that we have liberties 
to guard, and they may then go on without opposition to make their 
powers as strong as they please. What otherwise can be their reasons 
for joining all their powers against his? All he aims at is, to obtain 
the amendments which the whole country says we ought to have.” 58 
In the autumn of 1788, following the ratification of the Constitution, 
eight men, including Melancthon Smith, Marinus Willett, John 
Lamb, and Samuel Jones, met at Fraunces’s Tavern and formed a 
society for the purpose of procuring a national revising convention. 
A considerable number of men, especially in the rural communities, 

67 Hamilton’s Works, I, 560*62; N. Y. Advertiser, March 23, 25, April 1, 1780. 

w N. Y. Journal, March 26. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 301 

hoped for such a revision, and they were kept reminded by a State 
committee of correspondence that their votes ought to go to Clinton. 

The contest was close, and though the balloting was held at the 
end of April, the result was not fully known until the first of June. 
Yates carried five counties—that of New York, 833 to 385; those 
of Albany and Montgomery, the Schuyler strongholds, by 1577 to 
1000, and 277 to 181, respectively; and Columbia and Dutchess by 
small margins. When in Columbia the Clintonians took steps to 
void the election in the town of Livingston, on a number of highly 
technical objections, one ardent federalist rode thirty-five miles in 
an afternoon to give his party leaders warning. 59 Clinton swept 
the eight other counties of the thirteen. In Orange he was given 
four votes to every one for Yates, in Clinton his vote was all but 
unanimous, and in Ulster he received the huge vote of 1039 to 206. 
But in all, of a poll of 12,353, Clinton had only 6393, or a bare 
majority of 429. He had won a victory so narrow that in moral 
effect it was Pyrrhic. He explained to a visiting Virginian, one of 
Patrick Henry’s friends, that the combination against him had been 
almost overwhelming—that almost all the gentlemen, and all the 
merchants and mechanics, had united to strike him down forever. 60 
But in the taverns, in newspaper offices, and on street corners, the 
political generalship of Hamilton was a theme for praise. This astute 
young man of thirty-two had taken full advantage of the tide toward 
federalism in New York, and had all but defeated the most popular 
man in the State, head of the most effective political machine in 
America. 

To emphasize Hamilton’s triumph, the Assembly was carried by 
the federalists, who now controlled both legislative branches, while 
three of the five members of Congress, chosen by districts, were of 
that faith. Egbert Benson, so long Attorney-General, and more 
recently one of the ablest of laborers for the Constitution, was one; 
another was John Lawrence, a city lawyer whom Hamilton had sup¬ 
ported as a man of sense, eloquence, and early and decided attach¬ 
ment to the Constitution. 

In short, though when the Federal Government came into full 
operation it found George Clinton still presiding over New York, 
with three years yet to govern, the outlook for federalism in the State 
was bright. Summoned in special session, the Legislature promptly 

e» Pnrr and Tournals of S. B. Webb, III, I30-3 1 * . , __ „ 

«o Henry^Venry.” III. 389-95; for election results, see Advertiser, May 27 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


302 

called Schuyler and King to be Senators; the latter being a Massa¬ 
chusetts man who, after long service in the Continental Congress, had 
removed to New York the previous year. At the same time, Wash¬ 
ington’s inauguration gave Hamilton a voice in suggesting the Fed¬ 
eral appointments, and Hamilton was too shrewd to miss using them, 
so far as he conscientiously could, for federalist ends. He as Secre¬ 
tary of the Treasury, and Jay as Chief Justice, wielded greater influ¬ 
ence in the State than ever; and three others of their party, Duane, 
Richard Harrison, and William S. Smith, became respectively judge 
of the district court, Federal Attorney, and Federal Marshal. Clin¬ 
ton appreciated the strength of the federalist position, and at once 
took steps to arm himself against it. 

VII. Politics in New Jersey and Delaware 

As in New York, so just across the Hudson in New Jersey during 
all this period the Governor’s chair was occupied by one man. 
William Livingston was a member of the same rich landed family 
from which sprang Edward and Robert R. Livingston. Educated 
at Yale, he had gained a reputation there for originality, had come to 
the New York bar a quarter-century before anyone seriously pro¬ 
posed independence, and in the constant struggle between Whig and 
Tory, had kept up a fertile production of pamphlets and newspaper 
articles. Though a poor orator, he was a ready writer, publishing 
in 1747 a long poem in imitation of Pomfret, called “Philosophical 
Solitude,” and constantly printing fugitive essays. As an editor, 
his reputation in the Colonies was considerable just before the 
Revolution. In 1772 he removed to “Liberty Hall” at Elizabeth, 
New Jersey, with the intention of retiring; but the busiest part of 
his life was before him. Retirement would in any event have been 
premature, for he was only fifty-three in 1776. 

New Jersey, when the Revolution began, saw that he was one of 
her ablest residents, and was glad to utilize his services as Penn¬ 
sylvania utilized those of a recent New Jerseyite, Reed, and Dela¬ 
ware utilized those of a former Pennsylvanian, Dickinson. Though 
Livingston hesitated to approve the Declaration of Independence, 
after once accepting it his determination never flagged. Soberly 
progressive in temper, quick-witted, cultured, he had also the tenacity 
of his Scotch stock. John Adams was pleased with his appearance, 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 303 


saying: “He is a plain man, tall, black, wears his hair; nothing 
elegant or genteel about him. They say he is no public speaker, but 
very sensible and learned.” This onetime dabbler in verse and 
essays returned from the second Continental Congress to take a 
brigadiership of militia at Elizabeth, and was soon skirmishing with 
the enemy. The first Legislature under the new State Constitution 
met at Princeton August 27, 1776, and the two houses at once went 
into joint session to choose the Governor. One group wanted Living¬ 
ston, and another Richard Stockton, a native of the State, long a 
law officer, and a signer of the Declaration. On the second day 
John Cleves Symmes transferred his decisive influence to Liv¬ 
ingston—Stockton being consoled by the office of Chief Justice. The 
State had for Governor a man on whom Washington relied only less 
than on Trumbull of Connecticut—the purest type of patriot. 61 

New Jersey lay in an exposed situation, the enemy always within 
her limits, and at one time in possession of virtually the whole State. 
In guarding against attack, punishing partisans who plundered the 
people, adjusting the quarrels of the militia and regular troops, and 
trying to satisfy the demands for supplies from both, Governor 
Livingston was kept more than busy. “New Jersey, which almost 
touches the fortifications of New York, has displayed heroic con¬ 
stancy,’’ a French officer exuberantly reported to his government. 
“Its militia assembles of its own accord at sight of a redcoat. Their 
Governor is a Roman. The republicans call him Brutus; the royalists 
an American Nero.” When the British army pushed across the 
State in 1776, the well-equipped regulars in pursuit of Washington’s 
ill-conditioned army, Livingston spared himself no exertion. He 
wrote personally to all State officers of the rank of Colonel or above, 
and scattered printed circulars to arouse the people. 

The Legislature had to remove from Princeton to Burlington, then 
to Pittstown, then to Haddonfield; and finally, in the remotest corner 
of the State, with nowhere else to meet and almost no territory for 
which to pass laws, dissolved. Of the newly organized State govern¬ 
ment only a vestige was left, and all was gloom until the Christmas 
battle of Trenton. After Trenton and Princeton, more and more of 
the State was reconquered, but a British army always lay along the 
northern boundary, and Livingston had to govern a commonwealth 
never secure until 1782. 

•1 Sedgwick’s “Livingston”; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, LV, 225 ft. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


304 

Especially in the western section, the problem of utilizing all mili¬ 
tary resources without outraging the Quakers was difficult. En¬ 
couraged by Washington, Livingston urged upon the Legislature a 
law strengthening the militia, and obtained a partial measure in 
March, 1777. “The act is extremely deficient,” he wrote Washing¬ 
ton, “and it has cost me many an anxious hour to think how long it 
was procrastinated, and how ineffectual I had reason to suppose it 
would finally prove.” At the same dangerous time, with Howe’s 
strong army threatening Washington’s weak force at Morristown, and 
Burgoyne ready to begin his march from the north, Livingston pre¬ 
vailed upon the Legislature to pass another act constituting the 
Governor and twelve members of the Legislature a Council of Safety, 
with extraordinary powers for six months to act against the enemy. 
Repeated but abortive attempts were made by Tory or British com¬ 
mands to capture Livingston, a reward of 2000 guineas having been 
offered for his person. The enemy appreciated the part which he 
played in strengthening Washington’s levies in the spring of 1777, 
when the Americans finally pushed Howe back upon Staten Island. 

All this time the Governor could not refrain from using his pen 
to defend the Revolution. In February, 1777, he published in the 
Philadelphia Packet an essay satirizing the mendacity of Rivington’s 
Tory Paper, the Gazette, in New York. In December he published 
in the newly founded New Jersey Gazette, at Burlington, papers on 
the exchange of Burgoyne and the attempted conquest of America, 
and he brought out even a jeu d’esprit on the bulky petticoats of the 
Dutch women of Bergen County. During 1778 he made many con¬ 
tributions to the New Jersey Gazette, and prided himself upon the 
fact that the British would rather hang him for writing than for 
fighting. Rivington retorted by bestowing on the Governor such 
epithets as Don Quixote of the Jerseys, the Itinerant Dey of New 
Jersey, and the Knight of the Most Honorable Order of Starvation. 
Finally, the Assembly intimated that it thought the essays rather 
undignified for a Governor, and Livingston discontinued them. 

Until after the Federal Constitution went into effect, Livingston 
remained Governor. There was frequently some opposition to his 
reelection, but it never attained much strength. In the fall of 1778, 
when the British in Philadelphia and New York half encompassed 
the State, he received 31 votes to 7 in favor of General Philemon 
Dickinson, who had commanded the Jersey militia at the battle of 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 305 

Monmouth. Two years later Livingston obtained 28 votes out of 
36, David Brearly and General Dickinson dividing the rest. The 
election of the fall of 1781 was unanimous; we have no record of the 
vote in 1782; and in 1783 he received 33 votes out of 34. It is evi¬ 
dent that as Governor and Chancellor he gave entire satisfaction, and 
that the State had few party quarrels. In 1784, when General Elias 
Dayton was nominated against him, he obtained 38 votes out of 43. 
The following summer he declined an appointment as Minister to 
Holland, in succession to John Adams. He was one of the delegates 
to the Constitutional Convention, and of course used his influence to 
obtain ratification of the Constitution; New Jersey, after only a 
week’s debate, came under the “new roof.” The feeling in the State 
at this time was generally federalist; there were only a few who, like 
Abraham Clark, a signer of the Declaration, preached a State Rights 
doctrine. As a small commonwealth lying unprotected between two 
great ones, New Jersey had much to gain from the new Federal 
Government. The Congressional election of 1789 was fiercely fought, 
but the line was drawn rather between the eastern and western sec¬ 
tions than between the federalists and anti-federalists. 

As New Jersey’s politics at some points touched those of New 
York, so Delaware’s at some points touched those of Pennsylvania. 
Had the conservatives remained in the saddle in Pennsylvania, the 
course of affairs in the two States might have run fairly parallel. 

A spirit of caution and moderation dominated the three lower 
counties on the Delaware. Thomas McKean, who held Delaware 
office almost continuously from 1762 to the end of the Revolution, 
has told us that “a majority of this State were unquestionably against 
the independence of America.” In Kent and Sussex, more than half 
the population were Episcopalians, and in both, but particularly 
Sussex, the ministers fostered Toryism by representing the Revolu¬ 
tion to be designed in the interests of Presbyterians. Newcastle 
County, lying nearest to Pennsylvania, had a large Ulster Scotch 
population, and three-fifths of its people were Presbyterians, so that 
Whiggism was stronger here. The man who more than any other 
shaped the first State policies, George Read, held moderate views. A 
Marylander by birth, and a lawyer by profession, he had been 
Attorney-General from 1763 until he became a delegate to the Con¬ 
tinental Congress in 1775. He was a patriot of the same stamp as 
Dickinson and Robert Morris, struggling to delay an assertion of 


3 o6 THE AMERICAN STATES 

independence and voting against the Declaration, but zealous to 
maintain it afterwards. The first Legislature chosen under the State 
Constitution recalled McKean and Rodney from Congress, the two 
delegates who had advocated independence there, but reelected 
Read. 

This Legislature chose a Council of Safety of fifteen members, and 
on February 12, 1777, it named John McKinley as the State’s first 
President. He also was highly conservative, and his election angered 
the radicals as much as had the rebuke to McKean and Rodney. In 
September following, the British suddenly fell upon Wilmington, 
seized President McKinley from his bed at dead of night, and cap¬ 
tured the little patriot vessels in which were kept the public records 
and moneys. George Read, as Vice-President, hurrying from 
Congress by a circuitous route to take the vacant chair, soon showed 
that McKinley’s capture had done the patriot cause no harm. Read 
appreciated the fact that the die was cast, and was unremitting in 
his endeavors to arouse the three counties and to counteract the 
general disaffection. 

Partly because Read’s energy put a new spirit into the State, 
partly because the British capture of Philadelphia strengthened the 
radicals, at the election in March, 1778, the progressive element 
beat the conservatives. It was able to choose its old captain, Rodney, 
as President. In spite of ill health, Rodney was a man of ability 
and aggressiveness. Tall and thin, he made a strange impression 
upon all he met. “His face is not bigger than a large apple, yet 
there is sense and fiery spirit, wit and humor in his countenance,” 
wrote Adams. He served throughout the war, and might have con¬ 
tinued Governor after the expiration of his term in 1781 had it not 
been unconstitutional for him to succeed himself. The fourth chief 
executive was John Dickinson, who accepted the place very un¬ 
willingly. His moderation commended him, for by this time the 
conservatives had regained their dominance. Dickinson in the fall 
of 1782 was elected President of Pennsylvania, and held the two 
offices until he resigned in January, 1783, though he had previously 
turned his duties in Delaware over to John McCook. The terms of 
Nicholas Van Dyke (1783-6) and Thomas Collins (1786-89) fol¬ 
lowed. 

Political currents flowed smoothly in Delaware after the Revolu¬ 
tion. There was some persecution of loyalists and neutrals by 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE STATES 307 


volunteer local agencies in 1783 and 1784; in the spring of the 
former year, for example, the radicals of Sussex County held a con¬ 
vention, and agreed that if any Tories came back, the militia officers 
were to give them two days in which to get out. 62 But this amounted 
to little; indeed, the loyalists were so numerous that a widespread 
persecution would have been impossible except by turning the State 
upside down. There were no constitutional questions of importance, 
and Delaware early put her finances in good order. The Federal 
Constitution was received with such enthusiasm that Delaware gave 
the first ratification; and the Governor elected in 1789, Joshua Clay¬ 
ton, was a staunch federalist. 


82 See Freeman’s Journal, June 4, 1783, for the vigorous resolutions by which the 
Sussex Whigs announced their intention of dealing roughly with returned Tories. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


POLITICAL development: the upper south 

The two upper States of the South were on the whole much better 
governed than the three lower. This was due in part to the fact 
that since Maryland and Virginia suffered less from the war than 
the Carolinas and Georgia, their recovery was simpler, and the 
temptation to deal harshly with their former enemies weaker. They 
had also an advantage in leadership, for they found abler men than 
either North Carolina or Georgia, while the superior character of the 
population, besides accounting for much of the better leadership, 
had much general influence upon the government. Annapolis was 
the wealthiest town of its size in America, and in the coastal parts 
of Maryland, divided for the most part into great plantations like 
those of Virginia, a considerable number of families gave their sons 
not only education and leisure, but a tradition of public service. The 
Virginia Tidewater boasted an aristocracy, rich, conservative, and 
well tinctured by culture, that with the lawyers of the inland country 
gave poise and foresight to the State’s administration. Poise was 
just what was lacking in North Carolina during most of the period 
from 1776 to 1789; it was shockingly absent in Georgia throughout 
the Revolution; and it failed in South Carolina twice after peace. 
In Maryland the peculiarities of the Constitution went far towards 
assuring it. 


I. Political History of Maryland 

Indeed, Maryland’s political history was set apart by the con¬ 
sistency with which House and Senate clashed upon important ques¬ 
tions. It was long a question with some whether the frame of govern¬ 
ment was not the worse for the care with which the two houses had 
been balanced against each other. 1 Had not mobility been too 
much sacrificed? When the Constitution was proclaimed, its provi¬ 
sion for the indirect election of the Senate struck many as bizarre, 

' Bond ’ “ State Govt, in Md., 1777-81” (Johns Hopkins Studies, Series 

XXIII, Nos. 3 and 4.) 

308 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 309 

and awakened an opposition which for a time threatened a legislative 
deadlock like that of the same months in Pennsylvania. The electors 
of the Senate met in Annapolis a fortnight before Christmas, 1776, 
and chose the fifteen members of the upper house, while the House of 
Delegates was popularly elected a few days later. In their dislike 
of the new Constitution, several of the Senators planned to absent 
themselves from the Legislature, and thus prevent a quorum. They 
believed that the Constitution could then be proclaimed invalidated, 
and that the power of framing a new one would revert to the people. 
In the face of this danger, a special appeal was made to several 
wavering senators! Early in 1777 the legislature was successfully 
organized at Annapolis; and it there chose Thomas Johnson, one of 
the leaders in the pre-Revolutionary agitation, to be the first 
Governor. 2 

The Senate and Assembly soon justified those who had prophesied 
that they would come into sharp conflict. One of the first disagree¬ 
ments was upon the question whether local civil officers should be 
eligible to the Legislature, the Senate maintaining that they should 
not. The upper chamber, its members enjoying a tenure of five 
years, was conservative, while the House, made up of men who had 
to keep a constant eye upon the voters’ good will, and who had less 
property, was a more changeable, radical body. In the fall of 1778 
another quarrel arose over the pay of the legislators, the House 
maintaining that no gentleman could live in Baltimore on less than 
$8 a day, and the Senate, led by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, point¬ 
ing to the danger of making money rather than a sense of public 
duty the incentive towards office-seeking. This dispute went so far 
that the house accused the Senate of unnecessarily prolonging the 
session, and of using “unbecoming sarcasm and irritating sneers.” 
Meanwhile, one hot-headed Assemblyman, Samuel Chase, actually de¬ 
clared that Senator Samuel Wilson was a traitor, that Senator 
Thomas Jennings was suspiciously near a loyalist, and that Daniel 
of St. Thomas Jenifer was secretly advocating a reunion with Great 
Britain. No better illustration could be found of the difficulty which 
a radical felt in understanding a conservative during these years of 
war. A legislative inquiry quickly exploded the charges. In 1779 
the House refused to accept any communications from the Senate 
regarding the annual appropriation bill, maintaining that it had 


3 Md. Journal, April i, 1 777 * 


310 THE AMERICAN STATES 

exclusive jurisdiction over money acts; and the Senate vehemently 
protested. 

A more serious quarrel arose over measures which the radicals 
brought forward at the spring session of 1777 for the restraint of 
Tories. The danger from disaffected elements seemed considerable. 
In January, the patriots of the lower eastern shore had excitably 
warned Congress that they feared a rebellion in two counties there, 
and troops were dispatched. The panic caused a wave of resentment 
against certain prominent Tories on both shores. An extensive pro¬ 
gram of regulations and penalties was drawn up to punish Toryism. 
As a loyalist observed, it was “rigid to a violent degree,” and was so 
earnestly combated in the Senate that at length it passed only in a 
much modified form. Any person who affirmed the authority of 
Great Britain, or tried to induce anyone to return to British alle¬ 
giance, was to be fined not more than £10,000 in current money, and 
imprisoned not more than five years, or banished; lesser offenses 
against the patriot government were to be punished by slighter 
penalties; and no one was to travel without a pass. Radical Whigs, 
considering this legislation too hard to execute and faulty in not 
applying to neutrals, demanded a Test Act. Twice one which they 
framed passed the House, and twice it failed in the Senate. The 
upper chamber would consent to a bill requiring all officeholders and 
voters to take an oath of allegiance, but it opposed one which would 
harshly punish all citizens who refused the test. 3 

However, in this instance the Senate yielded. At the October 
session in 1778, it consented to a law which made all non-jurors of 
eighteen or older subject to a treble tax, the loss of their civil 
rights, and debarment from trade or the learned professions; a most 
unjust and impolitic law. Quakers, Dunkers, Mennonites, and 
Methodists refused the oath for conscience’s sake, and almost one- 
third the State’s inhabitants remained non-jurors—“the far greater 
part of them ignorant, harmless, and inoffensive people.” 4 

Beginning the autumn of 1779, much feeling was again aroused 
between the two houses by proposals for a general confiscation of 
loyalists’ estates. 5 In the previous May, British forces had entered 

8 For discussions of the Test Act, see Md. Journal, July 22, 27, etc., 1777. 

4 Md. Journal, June 16, 1778. 

6 Some light is thrown on the temper of the time by an occurrence of July, 1779. 
One Wm. Goddard published in the Md. Journal of July 6 certain “queries political 
and military,” which were thought to reflect upon Washington and the French. A 
party of citizens, led by Samuel Smith, three or four other officers, a negro drummer, 
a horse-shoer, and others, called upon Goddard and forced him to sign an apology. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 311 

Chesapeake Bay, taken possession of Portsmouth, and laid waste 
the shores for a long distance. The alarm had led to the hurried 
fortification of Baltimore, the mustering of all available militia, and 
the collection of stores for a siege. The State had already spent so 
much in raising Continental troops that its treasury, as Governor 
Johnson despondently wrote the delegates in Congress, was empty. 
This discouraging fiscal situation led the radicals to greet with 
alacrity the new proposal. Seizures of Tory property were the talk 
of the hour in New York and Pennsylvania. Many rich Marylanders 
had found refuge with the British and their property could be had 
for the taking. A confiscation bill was with all speed drawn up, and 
late in the fall jubilantly passed by the House. The Senate, how¬ 
ever, led by Charles Carroll and other wealthy men, declared that 
“we are not convinced of the justice of the bill, less of its policy, 
and least of all of its necessity,” and defeated it. The House 
in an indignant uproar then voted resolutions denouncing the ob¬ 
structiveness of the upper chamber and requesting the voters to 
“express their sentiments upon the present differences between the 
two branches of the Legislature”—an appeal for an informal refer¬ 
endum. 

During the winter the two newspapers of the State, the Gazette 
of Annapolis and the Journal of Baltimore, were crowded by essays 
for and against confiscation. There could be no question which side 
was taken by popular feeling, and when the Legislature met again, 
petitions from all sections for the bill covered the desks of the 
presiding officers. Members of the House affirmed that unless the 
property of Tories were sold, the State Treasury could not meet the 
obligations due in 1780; and the Senate began to waver. Before 
the close of the year an event decided it. Maryland before the Revo¬ 
lution had invested £27,000 in the stock of the Bank of England, 
and had been trying to obtain its repayment; but in the fall of 1780 
Franklin, who had reached Paris upon his second mission, sent word 
of the Bank’s flat refusal. In their anger, some Senators changed 
their stand, and early in 1781 the Confiscation Act, which by this 
time had been modified, was passed with slight opposition. 

Later disputes between the two branches were frequent. Several 
occurred in January, 1783-a quarrel over the question whether the 

Jowa'rdlf tyr^rfnto' ihSe’io r'Tif’Jl thefnlmoul 

magistracy of this unhappily enslaved town. 


312 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Governor, Council, legislators, and higher judges should be exempted 
from militia duty, the Senate affirming that such men ought not to 
be made to shoulder a musket; a quarrel over the civil list, the 
Senate again maintaining that salaries should be moderate; and a 
quarrel over a bill for the naval defense of Chesapeake Bay. Always 
the Senate was more conservative and thoughtful, and invariably its 
objections were to the eventual benefit of the State. Each side 
prided itself upon the stilted and sarcastic papers it drew up for the 
other and the public. In these interchanges there is an echo of the 
Colonial quarrels between a privilege-loving, cautious Council, and 
a democratic, impetuous Assembly. 

Maryland’s first three Governors were able men. Rich Thomas 
Johnson had gained his election by a sweeping majority, forty votes 
against nine for Samuel Chase and a few scattering. A resident of 
Annapolis, long a legislator, and now nearing middle age, he had 
left the Continental Congress the summer of 1776 to serve in Mary¬ 
land’s Constitutional Convention, and thus, like Clinton, missed 
being a “signer”; later he became a brigadier-general of militia, and 
was in the field with Washington when chosen Governor. Having 
served the three successive terms the Constitution allowed, Johnson 
retired the fall of 1779, and Thomas Sim Lee, a member of the great 
family prominent in Virginia, was elected Governor over Colonel 
Edward Lloyd. Three years later came William Paca (the name is 
sometimes thought to indicate Bohemian origin), who was, with the 
exception of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the most distinguished 
son of the State in the Revolution. He had been one of the many 
young Marylanders attracted to the college in Philadelphia, and he 
supplemented his training there by study in the Middle Temple, 
London. Into the years 1774-82 he crowded labors as an organizer 
of the Revolution in the Province, a signer of the Declaration, State 
Senator, Chief Justice, and chief judge of the court of admiralty and 
appeals. He also was twice reelected. 6 

It is worth noting that none of the State’s most radical chieftains 
was elected Governor. The principal of these was the vehement 
Samuel Chase, later the defendant in the most famous but one of 
the nation’s impeachment trials. Born the son of an English minis¬ 
ter, he had been liberally educated, was admitted to the bar just in 
time to share in the opposition to the Stamp Act, and early began 

6 Bond, 14 ff. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 313 

his long career in the Legislature. After 1770 he became so promi¬ 
nent in his Whiggism that he was made one of Maryland’s first 
delegates in the Continental Congress. With Franklin and Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton, he went north in 1776 to win the Canadians to 
participation in the Revolution, but returned betimes to play a lead¬ 
ing role in persuading Maryland to consent to independence. In the 
spring of 1776 two other delegates in Congress, Johnson and Golds- 
borough, had favored delaying the Declaration, while the Provincial 
Convention itself regarded an assertion of national freedom as pre¬ 
mature; but by organizing county meetings, and by incessant speak¬ 
ing, Chase and his associates brought Maryland into line. He was 
one of those men who are enthusiastically followed without being 
implicitly trusted, and whose following is greatest among the in¬ 
experienced and ignorant. Even John Adams, whose views as to 
independence were precisely the same as Chase’s, criticized him for 
want of judgment, called him boisterous, and noted that in debate 
he was tedious upon frivolous points. He was so indiscreet that in 
the latter part of 1778 he brought himself under suspicion of having 
speculated in flour upon the basis of his knowledge of a secret resolve 
by Congress to purchase 20,000 barrels of that commodity. Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton solemnly accused him of this breach of trust 
in two newspaper essays of August, 1781; Chase published his de¬ 
fense the next month; and the Legislature which met soon after¬ 
wards, inquired into the matter, found the evidence poor, and 
acquitted Chase. 7 But the hostility between him and various con¬ 
servatives contributed much to the irritation between the two houses. 

One of Chase’s proteges, was the equally noted Luther Martin, 
who by Chase’s influence was in 1778 appointed Attorney-General 
of Maryland. 8 In that post he prosecuted the Tories with such 
bitterness that he offended the State’s better sense, and made many 
enemies. After the war, in 1784-85, he sat in the Continental Con¬ 
gress. He had meanwhile, in 1783, married the daughter of the 
Captain Michael Cresap whom Jefferson, in his “Notes on Virginia” 
published the next year, accused of brutally murdering the family of 
the friendly Indian chief Logan; an accusation that Martin never 
forgave, one of his favorite comparisons being, “as great a scoundrel 
as Tom Jefferson.” Gifted with high talents and cursed with fatal 


T Md. Journal, Aug. 23, 30, 1781; Sept. 24, 1782. 

8 See Goddard’s “Luther Martin,” Fund. Pubs. Md. Hist. Soc.. 1887. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


3 H 

weaknesses, he was one of the most picturesque figures Maryland 
has produced. His eloquence, at its best, could even be compared 
with that of Patrick Henry; in later years he was called by Taney, 
who rose to be Chief Justice of the United States, “a profound 
lawyer”; and many illustrations are given of his sway over judges 
and juries, the rapidity with which he grasped a case, and the clear¬ 
ness with which he expounded it. His passion for drink only slowly 
impaired his prestige. He would be left fuddled by despairing col¬ 
leagues a few hours before an important case, and amaze them by 
walking into the courtroom on time, alert and prepared. Reverdy 
Johnson has related how he abandoned Martin drunk one night at 
an inn when they were attending court, and went to bed, to be 
awakened a few hours later by Martin entering and sitting soberly 
down to read the prayer-book. Martin was author of the once- 
famous definition: “A man is drunk when after dinner he says or 
does that which he would not otherwise have said or done.” In the 
decade 1780-90, when still young, he was building up his fine repu¬ 
tation at the bar, and as Chase’s second was a political power. 

The Revolution was followed in Maryland by factional quarrels of 
as much heat as those in most other States. The legislative session 
which opened November 1, 1784, and ended early in 1785, was espe¬ 
cially prolific of them. No less than four subjects of controversy 
appeared—the College bill, the Duty bill, the Potomac bill, and the 
bill to relieve non-jurors of the penalties imposed upon them. The 
opponents of the legislation passed, and wise, progressive legislation 
it was, called this “the black session.” 

The College bill was a measure to give the western shore its own 
seminary of learning, a mate to that existing on the poorer, more 
sparsely settled eastern shore. In 1782 the Legislature had passed 
an act founding the latter, under the name of Washington College, 
at Chestertown, and granting it £1250 a year. Friends had sub¬ 
scribed a small endowment, distinguished Marylanders had accepted 
appointments as governors and visitors, and William Smith, the 
exiled provost of the college in Philadelphia, was made President. 
The school thrived. Why should not the western shore also have a 
college and a State appropriation? asked delegates for Baltimore 
and Annapolis. “I reflected,” said one of them, “that Maryland was 
one of the few States of the Union which has no colleges, by which 
means she was tributary to Europe, Pennsylvania, Jersey, and Dela- 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 315 


ware, for the common rudiments of education—that immense sums 
of money were daily drawing out of the State, never again to be re¬ 
stored, for the purposes of education, which ought to be retained 
among us—in short, every possible exertion should be made to render 
Maryland respectable in science and literature.” 9 The State had 
about 275,000 inhabitants, or enough to support two colleges in a 
day when colleges were little more than high schools. Quite prop¬ 
erly, therefore, the Legislature chartered and appropriated £1750 a 
year to an institution called St. John’s College, at Annapolis, which 
was to form, with Washington College, the University of Maryland. 

Washington himself brought his influence to bear in behalf of the 
Potomac Bill, in which most legislators saw a useful internal improve¬ 
ment and a link with the West, but which a few regarded as likely 
to make Alexandria or Norfolk the rival of Baltimore, already the 
nation’s fifth commercial city. The Legislature had in May, 1783, 
appointed men to examine the Potomac, and they reported in the 
autumn that two years’ work and $92,000 would open it to the 
Great Falls. At Washington’s suggestion, the Virginia Legislature 
in 1784 named three deputies, one of them himself, to confer in 
Annapolis with Maryland, representatives. Washington was there¬ 
fore in the capital when, in December, the bill was brought up and 
passed. With a concurrent Virginia act, it chartered the Potomac 
Company to improve the river’s navigation, and authorized a State 
subscription of £5000 worth of stock—the whole initial capital being 
only £50,000. Within a few months all the stock was subscribed. 

The Duty Act was simply one of the various State tariff acts, 
levying duties not only upon imports but upon exports in foreign 
bottoms. As for the bill to relieve non-jurors, it unfortunately 
failed, after precipitating another quarrel between the House and 
Senate. This time the Senate, inveterately cautious, was ranged 
against the non-jurors, while the House had become their champion; 
on January 14, 1785, with Samuel Chase as its principal sponsor, the 
bill was carried in the House 34 to 9, but next day the upper cham¬ 
ber defeated it 9 to 1. Forthwith the House approved an indignant 
message which Chase had written, declaring that: 10 


To disfranchise a number of citizens by depriving them of the right to elect rep¬ 
resentatives, and to bind them by laws to which they are prohibited by law from 
dving any assent, is the highest exercise of legislative power and ought only to be 
Exercised in extreme exigency, for the safety of the State, and ought not to be con- 


9 David McMechen, Md. Journal, Sept. 23, 1785. 

10 Md. Journal, Sept. 12, 1788. 


3 i6 THE AMERICAN STATES 

tinued after the necessity ceases. We believe there are thousands cut off from citi¬ 
zenship by the law which we propose to repeal, a law made amidst the tumult and 
rage of war. Amongst those proscribed are numbers of Quakers and Methodists. . . . 

This message proposed as a compromise that non-jurors be allowed 
to vote, but be excluded from office. The Senators, who had been 
chosen when the war was at its bitterest crisis, refused even this, 
and the House, after asking whether lenity was not more likely to win 
support for a republican government than harshness, yielded. 

In every section of Maryland, during the summer of 1785, dema¬ 
gogues appealed to the unthinking by attacks upon the men who 
stood for progress in education, internal improvements, and com¬ 
mercial independence of England. A pair of colleges would be too 
expensive, they said; and this grant of £3000 a year obliged the poor 
laborer to assist the wealthy planter in giving polish to his sons, 
while his own children remained ignorant. It was correctly replied 
that the Legislature in 1773 had set aside £16,000 for higher learn¬ 
ing, and that this sum, diverted to war use upon a solemn promise 
of repayment, now amounted to more than £25,000. Moreover, a 
number of free schools for the poor had already been established; 
and how could teachers be provided, without seminaries to train 
them? Every tavern-keeper and tavern-haunter opposed the Col¬ 
lege Act because it included restrictions upon the sale of liquor by 
licensed retailers, and provided for raising money by a license tax 
upon all “ordinary keepers.” To spend £5000 in clearing the Po¬ 
tomac was also called unforgivable, whether the improvement would 
accomplish nothing and waste money, or be successful and enrich 
Virginia at Maryland’s expense. As for the duties, they would be 
a heavy tax on the poor and injure the Chesapeake trade. 11 

The State greatly needed a medium of trade—why, grumbled 
some, didn’t the legislators issue paper? It needed improved roads, 
laws to govern the care of the poor, and a better system of courts, 
yet the lawmakers were indifferent. One appeal to the “neglected 
mechanics” pictured Liberty wringing her hands and asking: “If 
taxes are multiplied with the public distress [tariff duties], if econ¬ 
omy is neglected in proportion as it becomes necessary [Potomac 
bill], and if the injustice of the Legislature adds to the convenience 
of the rich from the necessities of the poor [College Act], is it not 


11 For this controversy, see Md. Journal, Jan. 7, 1785; March 29, Aug. 23. In 
1786 was published a pamphlet, “Several Acts of the Gen. Assembly Respecting St. 
John’s College.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 317 


the exclusive privilege of my sons openly to complain?” 12 In Balti¬ 
more the two Delegates, David McMechen and John Sterret, were 
fiercely assailed, but were reelected at the October polls. 13 

Yet Maryland’s legislators managed to keep the State in the safe 
and liberal path. In the spring of 1782, after the usual dispute be¬ 
tween Senate and House, they granted Congress power to levy the 
five per cent impost, and in June, 1783, they followed this with their 
consent to the revised impost amendment. At the close of 1786 the 
bill to relieve the non-jurors of their penalties was revived, and 
passed both houses—easily in the lower, by a close margin in the 
upper. Chase was, as before, its leading advocate. One argument 
lay in the fact that the discriminations against loyalists, Methodists, 
Quakers, and the German sects were actually driving many valuable 
inhabitants to the west, the emigration being described as a “rage.” 14 
Early this same year the Legislature wisely refused to transfer the 
capital from the ancient seat in Annapolis to Baltimore, quashing the 
agitation by a vote of two to one in the House. 15 Above all, the 
cry of misled farmers and mechanics for soft money was denied. 

The struggle over the paper money question first became acute at 
the fall session of 1785, and it involved the angriest contest between 
the two houses in Maryland’s history. It is sufficient here to say 
that the wisdom of those who devised Maryland’s peculiar system of 
an indirectly chosen Senate was never better proved. In the fall 
of 1785 and the spring of 1786 the old Senate, its five-year term 
almost ended, stood like a stone wall against the paper emission 
which Chase and the House of Delegates were demanding. The new 
Senate, chosen by the electoral college in September, 1786, proved 
adamant in its opposition, and Maryland escaped a heavy financial 
blow. 

Nor was Maryland less wise in national affairs. Everyone knows 
that the State led in the movement for divesting the larger States 
of their claims to extensive western areas, placing all such tracts at 
the disposal of Congress. Everyone knows that it was out of the con¬ 
ferences between Maryland and Virginia over the navigation of the 
Potomac and Chesapeake, and over uniform tariffs and currency, 
that there grew the Annapolis Convention of September, 1786. The 


13 Md. Journal, Sept. 30, Oct. 4, 1785. 

18 Md. Journal , Oct. 7, 1785. „ co 

14 Md. Journal, Sept. 23, 1785; Sept. 12, 1788. 

16 Pa. Packet, Feb. 4, 1786; N. Y. Packet, Feb. 


9 . 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


318 

prime movers for the Federal Convention were Washington, Madi¬ 
son, and Hamilton, but they owed much to the cooperation of Mary¬ 
land leaders. It was Maryland’s Legislature which, on November 
22, 1785, proposed to bring Pennsylvania and Delaware into the 
Annapolis conference, and emboldened Madison to maneuver for 
the passage by the Virginia Legislature of a resolution inviting all 
the States to send .delegates. 

But ratification of the Constitution was not easily obtained in 
Maryland. When the Legislature met in November, 1787, it asked 
the delegates to the Federal Convention to report upon its proceed¬ 
ings. They were five in number, of whom three, Daniel Carroll, 
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, and James McHenry, had signed the 
Constitution, while two, Luther Martin and John Francis Mercer, 
had quit the gathering in disgust before it ended. Martin laid before 
the Legislature a powerful paper opposing the Constitution—it is 
said that decades later Calhoun was wont to recur to Martin’s argu¬ 
ments. With force of style, the Attorney-General argued that the 
government proposed was not really a federal government, but one 
tending towards the consolidation of all State governments; that the 
small States, like Maryland, were inadequately protected against 
encroachments; and that in a nation so extensive and imbued with 
such political traditions as America, liberty would be impossible 
when energetic State governments were destroyed. He objected to 
many specific provisions which seemed to impair the rights of the 
States, as that giving Congress the power to lay direct taxes, and he 
appealed to an old sentiment in Maryland when he pointed out that 
the national government would have no authority to erect a new 
western State out of the vast territory of Virginia, or Georgia, with¬ 
out the consent of those States. The arguments in favor of the Con¬ 
stitution were presented to the Legislature by Dr. McHenry, a man 
of less brilliance but solid parts. Born in Ireland, McHenry had 
studied medicine under Dr. Rush in Philadelphia, had become a sol¬ 
dier in the Continental army, and had been Lafayette’s aid; he was 
a close friend of Washington. A call for a State convention to de¬ 
bate ratification was carried in the House by a majority of seven. 

The campaign for seats in the State convention was the hottest 
political struggle Maryland had experienced since Samuel Chase’s 
fight for independence in 1776. The opposition to the Constitution 
was led by Luther Martin, Samuel Chase, and Governor Smallwood, 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 319 

while William Paca declared that unless he were assured that cer¬ 
tain amendments could be obtained, he would fight it as energetically 
as anyone. An equally influential array of names was mustered on 
the federalist side—Charles Carroll, Ex-Governor Thomas Johnson, 
McHenry, Daniel Carroll, George Plater, the Tilghman family, and 
A. C. Hanson. It told against the Constitution that two of its makers, 
Martin and Mercer, were so eager to denounce it. On the other 
hand, the reaction from the paper-money craze assisted the federal¬ 
ists, for it could not be forgotten that Chase, and the radicals and 
debtors who with him had clamored for bills of credit, were one in 
opposing the Constitution. “Honest, independent men,” wrote a 
federalist, “should be alarmed in seeing them, the speculators and 
all the applicants to the Chancellor [i.e., bankrupts], laying their 
heads together in opposing the Government.” 16 

Before the polls opened it was agreed that the federalists would 
easily elect a majority of the Convention. But the anti-federalists 
stuck to their guns, and in Annapolis and Baltimore especially the 
campaign was fought to the last minute. 

In the latter city the people at first planned to send to the con¬ 
vention their two delegates in the House, McMechen and Sterret. 
But doubts arose as to their federalism, and a large meeting at 
Starck’s Tavern just before the election put them a direct question: 
would they vote for ratification without first demanding amend¬ 
ments? They refused to answer, and on the second day of the bal¬ 
loting two rival candidates whose approval of the Constitution was 
unquestioned, McHenry and Dr. John Coulter, were hurriedly nom¬ 
inated. 17 The town gave them almost a thousand votes apiece, while 
McMechen and Sterret both fell well short of 400. The public re¬ 
joicings exceeded any since the close of the war. The shipbuilders, 
ship outfitters and provisioners, merchants, manufacturers, and sev¬ 
eral thousand citizens joined in a procession which wound through 
the different streets, preceded by the flag and a smartly decorated 
ship, supported on the shoulders of sailors; as this emblem of union 
passed, the crowd gave voice to “reiterated acclamations of joy.” 18 
The result was similar in aristocratic Annapolis, where the two fed¬ 
eralists elected were A. C. Hanson and Nicholas Carroll. In the 
counties which contained these cities, however, anti-federalist dele- 

18 Md. Journal, March 14, 1788. 

17 Idem, Sept. 19, 1788. 

M Idem, April xx, 1788. 


320 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


gates were chosen. Two members of the influential Ridgely family 
had places on the anti-federalist ticket in Baltimore County. In 
Ann Arundel County, John Francis Mercer ran, and when an effort 
to make Governor Smallwood a candidate failed because of his ab¬ 
sence, Samuel Chase, though now a resident of Baltimore, was im¬ 
pressed to take his place; they easily beat the federalist ticket, head¬ 
ed by Charles Carroll of Carrollton. 

In some districts the anti-federalists were completely smothered. 
Thus in Washington County they polled only a score of votes, while 
the federalists had nearly 600, and could have mustered 1500. The 
final returns showed that only a handful of men would vote outright 
against the Constitution, while nearly two in every three would op¬ 
pose amendments; more than half the counties, in fact, instructed 
their delegates to ratify without considering the amendments that 
Paca and others wished. 19 

The Convention, which met immediately after the election (April 
21, 1788), afforded one of the early illustrations of a perfect “steam 
roller.” It was not a deliberative assembly at all. The majority 
came to the hall with a definite program, and fearing some obstruc¬ 
tion or stratagem on the part of the minority, pushed it through ruth¬ 
lessly. The convention no sooner entered upon its business than it 
resolved that there should be no debate upon the amendment of the 
Constitution, but that after the instrument had been twice read, 
and debated as a whole, President Plater should put the question 
of ratification. When Paca tried to offer his amendments, the major¬ 
ity pointed out that they were instructed “to ratify the proposed 
Constitution, and that as speedily as possible, and to do no other 
act.” The federalists did not deign even to speak in answer to their 
opponents, and carried the ratification 63 to n. Afterwards Paca’s 
twenty-eight amendments were submitted to a committee of both 
parties, which agreed to report the first dozen favorably, but this 
was never done, though Paca had the satisfaction of reading them 
to the Convention. In brief, the anti-federalist minority was ex¬ 
cluded from a hearing, and, as it indignantly declared, the majority 
would not even let the yeas on the motion smothering the amend¬ 
ments be entered on the journal. 

In Maryland, as in other States, men in the latter part of 1788 
looked back regretfully to the time when party divisions had been 

19 Md. Journal, April 15, 18, 1788. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 321 


more local, more transient, and less angry. Each side blamed the 
other for the change. In Baltimore, a federalist writer insisted that 
Sterret’s and McMechen’s treachery to the federalist side “was the 
just cause of all our present disturbances. This introduced the dis¬ 
tinction of federal and anti-federal in this town, scarcely known or 
felt before.” That fall the campaign for seats in the House brought 
to the surface alarming party passions. 20 

The contest in Baltimore even produced rioting. When the fed¬ 
eralists nominated Dr. McHenry and Dr. John Coulter, and the 
anti-federalists David McMechen and Samuel Chase, it was seen 
that the race would be close. Animosity began to arise when Mc¬ 
Henry accused Chase of being unfriendly to the mechanics interests, 
and much excitement was shown at a public meeting called by 
Robert Smith, one of the richest merchants, who denounced Chase 
bitterly for his opposition to a strong Federal government. A few 
days later, at a Chase-McMechen meeting in the Fell’s Point or 
shipping district, the anti-federalist speakers were routed by heck¬ 
ling, groans, and drums. Several street affrays by grog-excited men 
followed. On September 15, Chase and McMechen held another 
meeting at the Court House, and as they were returning to the resi¬ 
dential section, were attacked by a score of men with bludgeons; 
some of their party were knocked down, and the rioters smashed 
the windows of Chase’s house. While the fever was at its height 
the four days of polling came on. Chase and McMechen received 502 
and 494 votes respectively, against 635 for McHenry and 622 for 
Coulter, and though the anti-federalists, who won the county seats, 
raised the cry of fraud, the Legislature did not sustain the charge. 

Immediately the attention of all politicians was turned to the 
choice of Congressmen and Presidential electors. 21 The State was 
allotted six Representatives, and the Legislature decided that they 
should be chosen on a general ticket, but that each must reside in 
the district for which he was nominated. A caucus of federalist 
leaders and legislators, in which both McHenry and Samuel Smith 
were prominent, was held at Annapolis late in 1788 to make ready 


20 F or this election see files of Md. Journal, August, September, and October, 1788; 

Steiner’s McHenry, 114 , j February 1789. The Federalist ticket for 

21 See files of Md. Journal J^^Stone j oshu a Seney, Benj. Contee. Wm. Smith, 
Representatives comprised Michael a n ti b federalists did not attack the Federal Govern- 
Seo. Gale, Daniel Carroll The anti iederans ^ guardians of the rights. of the 

”eop!e and'“wwedly'"‘opposed',S that ( aristocratical influence and spirit which are 
prevalent in the councils of this State. 


322 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


for the contest. It agreed upon tickets for Congress and the elec¬ 
toral college which mass-meetings in various centers immediately 
endorsed, and a State committee was appointed to conduct the cam¬ 
paign. The anti-federalists, conscious of their weakness, resorted 
to the same tactics as in Pennsylvania—that is, they nominated a 
ticket made up in part of their own men, in part of federalists. 
This ticket, they said, represented an uncompromising enmity to 
“that aristocratical influence and spirit which are prevalent in the 
councils of this State, and dangerous to public liberty.” They stood, 
they explained, only for amendments to the Constitution to secure the 
safety of the people and State, and their nominees were careful to 
promise a firm support of the new government. The federalists, on 
the other hand, insisted upon the dangers of launching the new sys¬ 
tem under the auspices of its enemies. Special efforts were put forth 
by both sides in Baltimore. William Smith, a man of wide commer¬ 
cial experience, was named there for Congress by the federalists, and 
Samuel Sterret, a capable lawyer, connected with influential county 
families, by the anti-federalists. 

The result was the expected federalist victory. The party elected 
its six Congressmen by votes ranging from 7725 to 5154, as against 
votes for the anti-federalist nominees ranging from 2727 to 1829. 
The most prominent of those elected was Daniel Carroll, and of 
those defeated, John F. Mercer. The federalist majority for Presi¬ 
dential electors was even more emphatic. During the polling, the 
Maryland Journal reported great jubilation: 

The Point displayed a spirit of federalism which does it the greatest honor. The 
little ship was brought forward, and several other emblems descriptive of the occa¬ 
sion. It would be injustice to the friseurs to omit mentioning, in a particular man¬ 
ner, their patriotism. They appeared at the polls with a figure representing the god¬ 
dess of Federalism, and an excellent painting of General Washington, and conducted 
themselves throughout the election with becoming order and decorum. 

Maryland’s election of United States Senators had meanwhile 
taken place at the fall legislative session. The two houses agreed 
that the choice should be made on a joint ballot, but that no person 
was to be declared elected unless he received a majority of the at¬ 
tending members of each house. At this time the Senate consisted 
of fifteen men, and the House of eighty. On December 9, 1788, the 
joint session was held, and a resolution was passed that one Senator 
should represent each shore—a resolution that long fixed Maryland’s 
policy. Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Uriah Forrest were nom¬ 
inated for the western shore, John Henry and George Gale for the 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 323 

eastern; and on the third ballot, Carroll and Henry, both federalists, 
were chosen. Maryland’s members of Congress were thus all fed¬ 
eralists. 

The Governorship had passed into the hands of William Small¬ 
wood in 1785, and in 1788 into those of John Eager Howard, who 
was a personage of especial interest. His inherited estate comprised 
a large part of what is now the city of Baltimore, and he gave lib¬ 
erally from it for public purposes. The sites of the public market, 
the cathedral, the Washington Monument, and much of the park 
area were once all his. It was his gift of a residential block that was 
instrumental, in 1786, in bringing Samuel Chase from Annapolis. He 
had distinguished himself in the Revolution, especially at the Cow- 
pens, and Washington esteemed him so much that he offered him 
the Secretaryship of War, just as he offered another former Mary¬ 
land Governor, Johnson, the Secretaryship of State—both declining. 

At his fine mansion “Belvidere,” which commanded a remarkable 
view of bay and town, he dispensed a hospitality which delighted 
the older generation. The early Maryland Governors, in fact, had 
an aristocratic quality, and Howard was the most aristocratic of all 
—a worthy contemporary of Hancock and Pinckney. 22 

II. Virginia Progressivism Under Jefferson 

When we turn from Maryland to Virginia, we turn from a popu¬ 
lation of roughly a quarter million in 1780 to one of roughly 575,000, 
and from an area of fourteen thousand square miles to a vast region 
bounded on the west by the Mississippi. We turn from a State 
which furnished no national leaders to one which counted them in 
the army, the Congress, and the diplomatic service. Virginia was 
more exclusively rural than Maryland, for her largest city, Norfolk, 
had in 1789 less than half the inhabitants of Baltimore, and her 
second largest, Richmond, only about five hundred houses; but her 
extent, wealth, and array of talent made the occurrences within her 
borders far more interesting to Boston mechanics and Georgia 

planters than events in Maryland. 

Nowhere did the struggle between progressives and conservatives 
have a broader meaning than in Virginia, nowhere were its lines more / 
clearly drawn, and nowhere was it harder fought. The progressives 

22 Howard, “The Monumental City,” 5<>7-9- 


324 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


advocated a wide program of social and political reforms. The 
lines were definite because the leaders would accept no compromise, 
and because the two sides were supported by two economic and in 
part by two sectional groups. The struggle was intense because, as 
in Pennsylvania, it meant the defeat or victory of the small privi¬ 
leged groups which had once dominated affairs; as in New York, it 
meant the downfall of influential and proud families; and above all, 
it meant the choice between the dignified tradition of colonial poli¬ 
tics, and a new democracy which seemed dangerous and repulsive to 
lovers of the old order, fruitful and splendid to the young radicals. 

The first progressive triumph in Virginia, the adoption of a lib¬ 
eral Constitution, was immediately followed by another in the elec¬ 
tion of Patrick Henry as Governor over John Page and Thomas Nel¬ 
son. Henry accepted the post as a consolation for his lost military 
command. Just so had two great agitators of New England and the 
Middle Colonies, Hancock and Dickinson, been thwarted in their 
military ambitions. Nelson, who had been head of the upper 
house in the days of the Crown, and was a “harmony” candidate, 
received 45 votes, or fifteen less than Henry. The orator took his 
oath of office July 5, 1776, and settled down in the Williamsburg 
residence of the royal Governor—a poetic retribution for the way in 
which Lord Dunmore a few weeks previously had referred to “a 
certain Patrick Henry of Hanover County.” Though Henry had 
theretofore been plain and unassuming, he now took on a dignity 
worthy of the successor of a long line of haughty Crown Governors; 
and with this new mien came a remarkable change of character. 

The three years that Henry was Governor witnessed his trans¬ 
formation from a fiery zealot of change to a defender of old institu¬ 
tions. His military disappointments, the death of his wife, his 
failing health, his tendency toward indolence, and the grinding 
routine of his office, against which the impetuous orator chafed, all 
played a part in this alteration. But more important was the fact 
that to him the bounds which the Revolution attained with inde¬ 
pendence were sufficient; that while he longed for the freeing of 
Virginia from Great Britain, he had nothing of Jefferson’s desire for 
egalitarian freedom. For Henry the Revolution reached its end in 
the Declaration; for Jefferson it reached its beginning. Whereas 
Jefferson had the faculty of absorbing new ideas and constantly ex¬ 
panding his ambitions, the political ideas of Henry were fixed. The 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 325 


leadership of the progressives passed at once from Patrick Henry to ? 
the young democrat from Albemarle, and his coadjutors Mason, 
Wythe, and Madison. They were social reformers, not merely politi¬ 
cal radicals. 23 

Jefferson, reelected to Congress about a week before Henry was 
chosen Governor, refused to accept, alleging, with reference to his * 
wife’s ill-health, “private causes.” But his chief motive was his / 
desire to seize the progressive helm in Virginia. “When I left Con¬ 
gress in 1776,” he wrote years later, “it was in the persuasion that 
our whole code must be reviewed and adapted to our republican 
form of government, and now that we had no negative of councils, 
governors, and kings, that it should be corrected in all its parts, 
with a single eye to reason and the good sense of those for whose 
government it was framed.” Already he had plans for altering the 
whole social structure of Virginia; his scheme for a Constitution 
had reached the Convention too late, and he intended to be prompt 
in reaching the Assembly. 24 In October he took his seat, and a 
place on the chief committees. The “laboring oar” was in Virginia, 
he said, not Philadelphia. The State had an opportunity of showing 
the American people—to quote his Declaration—how “to institute 
new government, laying its foundations on such principles and or¬ 
ganizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely 
to effect their safety and happiness.” 

His ready-made program was partly that of a practical politician 
and partly that of a Utopian idealist; and although he had not 
Henry’s forensic power and personal magnetism, he had indomitable 
persistence and much adroitness. On October 11, four days after 
the House sat, he obtained leave to introduce a bill for establishing 
courts of justice throughout Virginia. Next day he was authorized 
to bring in a measure to destroy the status of entail, and another 
for a revision of all the laws. Two days later he followed this with 
notice of a measure dealing more harshly with entail, and at the same 
time he and his aides began their agitation for the disestablishment 
of the Episcopal Church. 25 

The struggle thus initiated between conservatives and radicals 
lasted in one phase or another for years, though Jefferson achieved 


28 Eckenrode 167 ff. For the increased stateliness of Patrick Henry s manners, 
see Henrv ‘‘Henry,” I, 457*58; the Governor seldom appeared on the streets, and 
“'ever without a scarlet cloak, black clothes, and a dressed wig 
34 Randall’s “Jefferson,” I, 196 ; ‘ Writings, Memorial Ed., I, 53- 
85 Eckenrode, 169 ff. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


326 

some objects at the outset. It was mainly confined to the Assembly. 
Here Jefferson was supported in debate by a number of able col¬ 
leagues. One of the chief was George Mason, a plain-spoken con¬ 
troversialist; “of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in 
argument,” wrote Jefferson. Another was Wythe, who had been a 
personal friend of Fauquier, Botetourt, and other royal Governors, 
and who as professor of law in William and Mary had trained some 
of the House’s best members. Though small in stature and frail 
of health, he was a pertinacious debater. Most effective of all 
Jefferson’s supporters was the youngest, Madison, now twenty-five. 

The opposition to the abolition of entail and the church estab¬ 
lishment naturally enlisted almost the whole weight of the State’s 
aristocracy. This was headed by Speaker Edmund Pendleton, who 
was Virginia’s foremost legal scholar, taking precedence even of 
Wythe. Jefferson characterized him as cool, suave, resourceful, and 
so determined that “if he lost the main battle, he returned upon you, 
and regained so much of it as to make it seem a drawn one, by dex¬ 
terous maneuvers, skirmishes in detail, and the recovery of small 
advantages.” He knew his class, and could argue plausibly that as 
those most affected by the entail system approved it, it was not an 
abuse. Robert Carter Nicholas, a veteran attorney whose influence 
had been upon the side of conservatism in the Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, was his best second; and behind them stood Bland, now old 
and half blind, Carter Braxton, John Page, and others. A prepon¬ 
derance of sentiment, though largely inarticulate, was with Jefferson 
in his enmity to primogeniture and entail; while public feeling 
was more powerfully and articulately enlisted with him to destroy 
the “spiritual tyranny” of the Establishment. 

The progressives at once scored two important victories. They 
outlawed entail, refusing to consent to Pendleton’s proposal that it 
merely be made allowable for tenants in tail to abandon it if they 
liked. They also repealed all laws restricting men in their religious 
opinions, and exempted dissenters from contributions to the Episcopal 
Establishment; and though the government still had the right to levy 
taxes upon Episcopalians for the support of their own church, Jef¬ 
ferson succeeded in having these levies suspended until the next 
session. The connection between the government and church re¬ 
mained, but it was greatly weakened. Both progressives and con¬ 
servatives for the most part united in a third reform, the redrafting 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 327 


of the legal code, and following the passage late in October, 1776, of 
his bill for the revision of the laws, Jefferson was made a member of 
a committee including Pendleton, Wythe, Mason, and Lee, to do the 
work. Upon one minor proposal only were the progressives defeated. 
They wished the seat of government removed from Williamsburg, 
where, as Jefferson argued, it would be easy for the British to land 
at night behind the town from either the York or James, and capture ' 
it before its papers, munitions, and perhaps even the government 
officers could be removed. But the conservatives knew that the east¬ 
ern location of the capital, making it easy to reach from the Tide¬ 
water, hard to reach from the democratic West, was of political 
value to them. Moreover, there were weighty sentimental considera¬ 
tions in favor of keeping the seat of government where it had been 
located since the youth of the colony. Not until the session of May, 
1779, was the removal to Richmond carried. 253. 

By his measures affecting estates and the church, Jefferson before 
Christmas, 1776, had so antagonized the landed aristocracy and the 
clergy of Virginia that he felt their enmity throughout his long / 
career. But he had become unmistakably the leader of the forward¬ 
pressing faction of the Whigs, the great figure to which advanced 
opinion pinned its hopes for further reform; and outside the State 
his innovations attracted wide attention. The spring session of the 
Assembly in 1777 showed the majority solidly with him. For the 
speakership the conservatives nominated R. C. Nicholas and Ben- j 
jamin Harrison, while the progressives put up George Wythe, whom 
Jefferson always implicitly trusted. Wythe was easily elected. 
Three-fifths of the population of the State already lay west of the 
Tidewater, the 50,000 able-bodied freemen of 16 to 50 years of age 
enumerated in 1780-81 including about 19,000 in the Tidewater 
counties and about 31,000 beyond. Representation in the House 
was according to counties, but the conservative Tidewater counties 
were only 36 in number, and those to the westward 39* 

Indeed, Jefferson and his party easily maintained their ascend¬ 
ancy for more than two years. In 1778 he carried a bill to prohibit 
the importation of slaves, in accordance with a demand which had 
been strong before the war. In June, 1779, the conservatives tried 
to regain some of the lost ground by offering a measure for the rees- 


258 Old Landon Carter in 1776 heard some legislators talk of transferring the 
:apital “up to Hanover, to be called Henry-Town ; 5 Amer. Arch., II, 1305-06. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


328 

tablishment of religion on the basis of a general state support of all 
churches; and though Jefferson’s great final bill for religious free¬ 
dom failed at this session, so also did this conservative attempt at a 
retrieval. The net upshot of the debate on religious questions was 
a slight gain by the progressives, who obtained the final repeal of 
the act of 1748 providing state-guaranteed salaries for ministers of 
the Anglican church. 

Both of the reelections of Patrick Henry as Governor were unani¬ 
mous, and the Legislature showed its trust by repeatedly granting 
him extraordinary powers to meet the exigencies of war. The first 
bestowal, in December, 1776, set afloat a rumor that the Assembly 
was the theater of a conspiracy to make Henry a dictator. It is 
said that the fiery Archibald Cary, hearing of this conspiracy, re¬ 
quested Henry’s brother to tell the Governor that “the day of his 
appointment shall be the day of his death, for he shall feel my 
dagger in his heart before sunset”—evidence of the silly political 
nervousness of some Virginians. No one thought of vesting in Henry 
greater powers than Congress repeatedly vested in Washington, or 
than the Legislatures of South Carolina, Maryland, and Pennsyl¬ 
vania gave Rutledge, Johnson, and Reed, while actually, the execu¬ 
tive authority of Virginia was exercised less by the Governor alone 
than by the Council. Administration by 1778 had worn its accus¬ 
tomed grooves. While Jefferson and his aides were concerting their 
social reforms, Henry and his Council were tied to the unescapable 
drudgery of making war, raising revenue, and disciplining Tories. 

When the time came (1779) to choose Henry’s successor, the con¬ 
servatives held that Page ought to be promoted, while the progres¬ 
sives nominated Jefferson. There was no personal rivalry. Jeffer¬ 
son’s supporters believed that as Governor he would be able to ad¬ 
vance their cause irresistibly, and his opponents doubtless feared 
the same result, though a shrewd few may have seen that his elec¬ 
tion would rather bind and gag him. He was chosen in January and 
began his term June 1. From the latter date his decline as a leader 
began. “My great pain is lest my poor endeavors should fall short 
of the kind expectations of my country,” he said in his speech of 
acceptance. His forebodings were justified to an extent which would 
have wrecked the career of any leader less versatile, buoyant, and 
resourceful. His Governorship lasted two years, one of them the 
blackest in his public life. He came to the helm when his power in 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 329 

Virginia was at its greatest; he left it humiliated and stripped of 
most of his following. 

One reason for Jefferson’s discomfiture lay in certain real defects 
of capacity, amply illustrated when later he was President of the 
republic. A greater reason was that he became Governor at a dis¬ 
astrous moment, when the British turned from the north and launched 
their campaign to subjugate the South. The month before his elec¬ 
tion the enemy had seized Savannah, and before he had completed 
his first year in office, they captured Charleston. Washington, who 
was guarding the Hudson, hurried most of his Southern troops off 
to the new theater of war. Though Virginia had not yet been seri¬ 
ously invaded, it had borne its part in the struggle, and was keenly 
feeling the burden. The two State regiments originally raised for 
home defence had long ago been sent north to complete the Con¬ 
tinental quota. Now it was bitterly complained by the Carolinas and 
Georgia that the other States were failing to send help, and Jefferson 
strained every nerve to contribute to the forces facing Cornwallis. 

As throughout 1779 and 1780 the recruiting for service farther 
south went on, the Virginia militia became much depleted. Gov¬ 
ernor Jefferson wrote Washington to this effect on September 23 of 
the latter year. “The number of regulars and militia ordered from 
this State into the Southern service are about 7000,” he stated. “I 
trust we may count that 5500 will actually proceed; but we have 
arms for 3000 only. . . . We are still more destitute of clothing, 
tents, and wagons for our troops.” 26 A month later he wrote Gen¬ 
eral Gates that Virginia could not outfit all her men—could not 
even give them shoes. Transport facilities and provisions could be 
had only when commandeered, and the Governor himself had lost a 
wagon, two horses, and two negroes by impressment. The treasury 
was empty, specie had disappeared, and paper money was growing 
more and more worthless. The State, in fact, found itself stripped 
of the means of defense just at the moment when the British were 
in the best position for invading it. Sensible Virginians did not 
blame Governor Jefferson for sending generous help to the stricken 
States to the southward, but they did blame him for not leaving Vir¬ 
ginia even an effective emergency guard; he could have supplemented 
his aid to Virginia’s neighbors, they argued, by devising a plan for 
rallying and arming short term home forces. 

29 “Writings,” Memorial Ed., IV, 107. 


330 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


In the first British assault the State got off rather easily. Late in 
October, 1780, the enemy moved a fleet of sixty sail into the James, 
and, repeating on a larger scale a stroke they had executed in the 
last months of Henry’s Governorship, threw ashore 2500 men who 
did a little plundering in the region of Hampton Roads, lay in camp 
a month, and then returned to their ships. The chief effect of this 
raid was simply to make plain to everybody the State’s unprepared¬ 
ness. The Legislature, in its fall session at Richmond, was gal¬ 
vanized into action; it issued more paper money, called upon the 
counties to furnish clothing, military stores, and wagons, and ordered 
3000 men drafted. Jefferson for three weeks tried to collect troops 
enough to fight the British invaders, and completely failed. Even 
General Nelson, the most popular soldier in Virginia, could not drum 
up a sufficient command to defend an important pass near the Brit¬ 
ish base. What would be the future? Jefferson wrote Washington 
in great perturbation, complaining of an equal lack of weapons and 
of trained men. 

But only a short breathing spell was offered. On December 31, 
1780, came the news that a fleet- of twenty-seven vessels of nation¬ 
ality unknown had just entered the Capes of Virginia; and this 
time the enemy moved with vigor. While Jefferson waited, doing 
nothing except sending General Nelson to the lower river counties 
with power to collect the militia, the fleet pressed up the James. On 
January 2 the Governor was assured beyond the possibility of doubt 
that the vessels were British, not French, and he hastily took the 
action he should have taken two days earlier—sent out an urgent call 
for the 4700 militia within reach of Richmond. In fact, Clinton had 
been spurred by Cornwallis’s successes to send about 2000 men 
under Arnold to duplicate them in Virginia. Baron Steuben, who 
had been left behind by Greene and was at Richmond, thought that 
with the fighting men of Henrico, Hanover, New Kent, Goochland, 
Chesterfield, and other counties he could drive back the invaders. 
The Governor labored with desperate energy, spending days and 
nights in the saddle, and killing a blooded horse by galloping it 
about the country, but he could not get his troops together in time. 
Steuben kept south of the James, and Jefferson had to transport 
the State papers and some stores from Richmond across the river. 
The British on January 5 landed their forces at Westover, did what 
they liked in Richmond, and then dropped down in their ships to 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 331 

their old camp near Hampton Roads. They left behind a people 
convinced that, however great Jefferson was, he was not the man for 
Governor in such a perilous time. 

The truth is that Jefferson was too much a believer in the voice 
of the people and in consultation with their representatives to make 
a good war Governor. While Virginia was financially helpless and 
without military defences, he had busied himself with detail, he had 
asked the Legislature’s advice when he should have issued com¬ 
mands, and he had hesitated to take the brusque steps that would 
have made invasion dangerous. We can not blame him for his zeal 
in reinforcing the thin Continental armies. But it would have been 
possible in addition for a farsighted man, with more taste for action, 
to have raised troops, arms, and supplies for a mobile home force. 
After the loss of Charleston and the defeat at Camden these steps 
were imperative. The Legislature had been willing to support vig¬ 
orous measures for it had authorized Jefferson to call 20,000 militia 
into the field in case of attack, to halt exports, and provide maga¬ 
zines. But the raw militia could not be mustered rapidly from the 
scattered farms and plantations, and were poor fighters when mus¬ 
tered. We may infer from Jefferson’s utterances that he was 
restrained by a feeling that he must not press his authority too far. 
The act empowering a seizure of supplies having failed, he humbly 
apologized to the county magistrates in ordering further levies, saying 
that the Legislature would authorize them if in session, and that 
“substance and circumstance is to be regarded while we have so 
many foes in our bowels and environing us on every hand.” He 
summoned the Legislature ahead of its time in 1780, and requested 
more laws, though laws were not what was wanted. When a former 
Continental officer, Alexander Spottswood, made a sensible suggestion 
for raising a legion of mixed infantry and cavalry, under Continental 
regulations, for State service, he replied that several parts of the 
proposal were “beyond the power of the executive to stipulate.” 

Arnold, before leaving Richmond, had offered to spare the town 
if he were allowed to carry off the tobacco, and when this was re¬ 
fused, had set the torch to it. When Governor Jefferson went back, 
he found that what could not be burnt had otherwise been de¬ 
stroyed—the merchants’ rum had been staved in in the streets, and 
the salt emptied into the river. Plantations had been ravaged, for the 
British knew that tobacco paid much of the interest on the French 


332 THE AMERICAN STATES 

debt. Worst of all, Arnold and his array of British, Hessians, and 
Tories had not departed, but in their fortified position at Portsmouth 
were able at any moment to reascend the river. By January 18, 
1781, the slow-gathering militia amounted to 3700 men, in three 
widely separated encampments—one at Fredericksburg under 
Weeden, one at Williamsburg under Nelson, and one at Cabin Point 
under Steuben. In spite of the lamentable deficiency of muskets, 
powder, and bayonets, Jefferson for a moment plucked up courage, 
and even dreamed of some sudden, bold descent by picked frontiers¬ 
men into Arnold’s camp, to drag the traitor to condign punishment. 
He had better have been facing the grim realities. While he was 
revolving this pleasing scheme, and while the Legislature, which 
met in Richmond on March 1, was doing little more than order the 
enlistment of the two legions for which Spottswood had submitted a 
plan to Jefferson, the British were preparing their final stroke. 

It proved a double blow, struck by Arnold from the seacoast and 
by Cornwallis from the south. On April 18, when nearly all the 
40,000 potential soldiers of the State were planting crops, the force 
commanded by Arnold and Phillips again started from Portsmouth 
up the James. It paid a flying visit to Williamsburg, proceeded to 
City Point, and thence marched upon Petersburg, forcing Steuben’s 
small force to retire, and holding the town several days. This period 
it spent in destroying contraband property in the surrounding coun¬ 
try. Meanwhile Cornwallis, having beaten Greene at Guilford Court 
House, had found the way open for an invasion of Virginia from the 
south. On May 20 his worn army marched into Petersburg, effecting 
a junction with Arnold; and at the head of this double force he 
crossed the James in the direction of Richmond. The Legislature 
had by now fled to a safer refuge. Lafayette, who had been hur¬ 
riedly sent south by Washington, had only 3000 men. The British 
were in overwhelming strength, and short of recklessly attacking 
Lafayette, could do much as they pleased. They destroyed tobacco 
by thousands of hogsheads, and ships, flour, ropewalks, hides, and 
other property. In trying to cut Lafayette off from northern rein¬ 
forcements, Cornwallis in the last days of May penetrated into 
Hanover County, north and west of Richmond. 

At the same time (May 28), a quorum of the Legislature assem¬ 
bled at Charlottesville, the Governor’s home, within striking dis¬ 
tance of the British. The opportunity was too good to lose. A swift 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 333 

expedition under Tarleton was sent to bag the State officers, and 
only a speedy messenger saved Jefferson. The Assemblymen and 
Senators made an ignominious scurry, seven fell into the hands of 
the British, and the rest did not halt until they were safe over the 
mountains in Staunton. As he moved off down the James, Corn¬ 
wallis laid waste many more estates, among them that of Governor 
Jefferson at Elk Hill, where he burned the barns, destroyed the grow¬ 
ing crops, and cut the throats of horses. The total damage wrought 
by the British that summer was estimated at three million pounds 
sterling. With this last humiliation of the State, a new storm of 
abuse burst upon Jefferson. 

Just before this mortifying chase of the government from Char¬ 
lottesville, he wrote Washington that “a few days will bring to me 
that relief which the Constitution has prepared for those oppressed 
with the labors of my office, and a long-declared resolution of re¬ 
linquishing it to abler hands, has prepared my way for retirement to 
a private station. . . .” 27 The second year of his Administration 
would end June i, and he was in no mood to continue in office. He 
meant what he said of “abler hands.” He saw that he lacked apti¬ 
tude for energetic action; he had always believed that the powers of 
the Governor and chief military commander ought to be combined 
to ensure vigor in State defense, and now he knew his own deficiency 
in the qualities demanded by war. The Legislature, sitting at Staun¬ 
ton, took up the election of a new Governor on June 12. Some of 
Jefferson’s friends naturally thought he ought to be given a third 
year, and his biographer Randall declares that he was obliged to 
dissuade them before another man could be chosen. But it is likely 
that his defeat would have been inevitable had he desired reelection. 
Nor was his successor one of his followers. Thomas Nelson, of a 
wealthy and conservative Tidewater family, who was fitted for the 
post by his military experience, was made Governor, and began to 
assist in the campaign which ended in the capture of Cornwallis. 

But Jefferson was not to escape with the humiliation merely im¬ 
plied by retirement. Though the fact that the Legislature was meet¬ 
ing in the extreme west, where the radicals could attend more easily 
than the lowland conservatives, was in his favor, a resolution was 
passed June 12, ordering “That at the next session of the Assembly 
an inquiry be made into the conduct of the executive of this State 


17 “Writings,” IV, 184. 


334 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


for the last twelve months.” Its proposer was a young man of Jef¬ 
ferson’s own county, of progressive leanings, later to be a devout 
follower of Jefferson, named George Nicholas. Three of the five 
charges made—charges that Jefferson had not promptly prepared 
the State for invasion, had not used all available means of defense, 
had discouraged others by his personal timidity when Arnold took 
Richmond, had ignominiously fled from Tarleton, and had abandoned 
the Governorship when it became a post of danger—were thoroughly 
unfair; and the next Legislature dropped the inquiry, giving Jef¬ 
ferson the thanks of the State for his able Administration. But 
Nicholas’s resolution for the moment filled Jefferson with bitterness. 
When Edmund Randolph spoke to him of office that fall, he replied 
that “I have taken my final leave of everything of that nature. I 
have retired to my farm, my family and books, from which I think 
nothing will evermore separate me.” 28 Dispirited, beaten, angry, he 
avoided state affairs, till he was sent by Congress as a special ambas¬ 
sador to France to help negotiate a treaty of commerce. From 1784 
to 1789 he remained in Europe, and his considerable influence in 
Richmond was exerted by letters to friends. 

When Jefferson had been elected Governor, the leadership in the 
House had passed to Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, both 
one-time radicals who were now fast growing conservative. Jeffer¬ 
son bequeathed his unfinished program to Madison, Wythe, and 
Mason, and it made little further progress. From 1779 to the close 
of 1781, naturally, the Legislature was too much preoccupied by its 
fear of the British to undertake measures demanding long debate, 
and calculated to arouse internal antagonisms. 

III. Virginia Conservatism Under Henry 

After Jefferson’s departure for Europe, the progressive party for 
several years became disorganized, though not completely impotent. 
The temporary discrediting of its great spokesman had injured it. 
Moreover, people by the end of 1781 were weary of war, turmoil, 
and change; their fervent wish was for a peace and prosperity like 
that of the years before the Revolution and they invested the old 
conservative regime with a tempting glamour. For a third reason, 
the conservatives had the better leaders, since in addition to Henry 

““Writings,” IV, 187. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 335 

and Lee, the list included John Marshall, who—a lanky young law¬ 
yer of twenty-seven—was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 
1782, John Tyler, Benjamin Harrison, and Henry Tazewell. These 
leaders could count upon a fairly solid group of Tidewater dele¬ 
gates. To ordinary observers the Legislature might have seemed a 
highly democratic body, inclined to radicalism. The velvet coats, 
knee breeches, silk stockings, and fine linen had largely disappeared 
when the Revolution ended. While the Tidewater representatives 
still dressed well, the majority wore homespun or coarse imported 
cloth, and the men from over the Blue Ridge appeared in buckskin 
leggings and hunting shirts. Debate became less formal, the con¬ 
tempt for deliberative dignity would have shocked stately pre-Revo- 
lutionary leaders like Peyton Randolph, banter and laughter enliv¬ 
ened the proceedings, and some members were palpably illiterate. 
But this rampant democracy in exterior traits did not carry with it 
an intelligent progressivism in legislation. 

During the three years of reaction, 1782-4, Patrick Henry and R. 
H. Lee were personal but not party rivals in the House. Henry was 
the more powerful by far; his influence could be described only by 
the word Marshall used in 1783—“immense.” In the legislative 
session of 1783, for example, Lee wished to be Speaker, but when 
Henry pointed to John Tyler, Tyler received the heavy majority of 
41. At the session of 1784 Lee gracefully saved himself from an¬ 
other defeat by nominating Tyler. On many minor bills the two 
chieftains took opposite sides—so many that young Spencer Roane 
thought them “almost constantly opposed.” Both were inclined 
towards those oratorical battles in which Virginians delighted and 
their forensic styles formed a striking contrast. Lee was quiet, 
graceful, correct in diction, and though somewhat monotonous usu¬ 
ally pleasing; Henry, much more unequal in his efforts, could be 
much more striking and powerful, and if when uninspired he fell dis¬ 
tinctly below his opponent, when aroused by the issue his passionate 
eloquence carried all before it. He was almost always victorious, 
says Roane. But if they seemed constant rivals upon small ques¬ 
tions, on large questions and in general temper they harmonized, 
and when a real test arose in 1785 they joined hands against pro¬ 
gressivism. 

One evidence of the temporary conservative ascendancy lies in 
the character of the men who filled the Governor’s chair after 1781. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


336 


Nelson, a warrior and not a statesman, who could train the cannon 
on his own Yorktown mansion but could not plan a tax-bill, served 
less than a year, resigning after the surrender of Cornwallis. He 
had been a better war Governor than Jefferson, for he saw just what 
the military situation demanded, and paid no excessive attention to 
Council or Legislature. The conservatives promptly elected Benja¬ 
min Harrison, a rich planter of Charles County on the lower James; 
and in the summer of 1784, Patrick Henry was chosen again, for the 
first of two successive terms. 

But the best indication of the reaction is given by the bills passed 
and defeated. 29 The Assemblies both of 1782 and 1783 showed 
intense bitterness against the Tories, and in the latter year objec¬ 
tionable legislation was voted to prevent loyalist refugees from re¬ 
turning to Virginia. Instead of facing the financial problem man¬ 
fully and courageously, the Legislature protected from distraint men 
whose taxes had fallen into arrears, while it clung to the objection¬ 
able system of payments in kind. Madison and others after the 
close of fighting proposed to reopen all accounts which had been 
paid in depreciated money, and have them settled by a legal scale 
of depreciation—a measure which promised tardy justice to cheated 
creditors. But Henry indignantly opposed this plan, and it was 
never pressed. At the spring session of 1783, moreover, though 
Jefferson himself visited Richmond to urge favorable action, the 
impost plan offered by Congress was rejected by a heavy majority. 
Its opponents used the familiar argument that the body which 
controlled the sword must not control the purse, and R. H. Lee was 
convinced that it would not only endanger public liberty, but strangle 
Virginia’s commerce in the cradle, make the State pay more of the 
national burden than its share, and sacrifice the South to the North. 
The Virginians would go no further than to levy their own impost of 
five per cent., ultimately payable to a Congressional receiver. 

At the spring session in 1784 conservatism reached its height, and 
the progressive and reactionary parties clashed on a wide front. Ed¬ 
mund Randolph, writing Jefferson three days after the Legislature 
met, 30 announced that the issues that would occupy the Assembly 
were “first, a general assessment; second, restitution of British prop¬ 
erty; third, payment of British debts; fourth, the introduction of a 


a ® Journal, House of Delegates, passim; Lee’s “Life of R. H. Lee,” 
30 Conways “Randolph,” 55, 56; Eckenrode, “Church and State in 
Journal, House of Delegates, First Session 1784, 70. 


[, 23S ff. 
Va.,” 74 ff.; 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 337 


stamp act, under a less offensive name; fifth, the making of Norfolk 
the only port of entry and clearance.” He might also have named 
the question of revising the State Constitution, and that of giving 
Congress the appropriations it asked. By a general assessment, of 
course, was meant a general tax for the support of religion, each tax¬ 
payer designating the church he wished to assist. “It has Henry 
for its patron in private,” Randolph wrote, “but whether he will 
hazard himself in public cannot be yet ascertained.” The progres¬ 
sives suffered three real defeats, but on the most important question, 
that of the religious assessment, they held their ground. 

We may first note the defeats. The proposal to allow the recov¬ 
ery of British debts, then barred by law, had been made as soon as 
peace was declared. Virginia planters, in the easy-going days before 
the war, had been wont to order what they liked from London agents, 
pay by notes, and let their debts run up to ruinous sums. Many 
debts had become hereditary from father to son, so that, as Jefferson, 
himself a debtor, expressed it, “the planters were a species of prop¬ 
erty annexed to certain mercantile houses in London.” 31 As rav¬ 
aged Virginia was desperately poor, even partial payment in hun¬ 
dreds of instances would mean bankruptcy. The people and Legis¬ 
latures were divided. Madison’s proposal was to make the debt pay¬ 
able, with interest from the date of the definitive treaty, in two in¬ 
stalments, and if the British refused or delayed either the evacua¬ 
tion of the frontier posts, or the return of the slaves carried away 
from Virginia, to collect damages from the second installment. This 
was nothing more than public honor, under the treaty, demanded. 
R. H. Lee supported Madison, declaring that Americans would have 
done better to remain “the honest slaves of Great Britain, than to 
become dishonest freemen,” but Henry defeated the bill. The at¬ 
tempt to revise the Constitution also met what Madison called 
“violent opposition” from Henry, and failed. Madison’s plan 
to restrict Virginia’s commerce to Alexandria and Norfolk was a 
desperate expedient for nourishing a rival to Baltimore and Phila¬ 
delphia, but local jealousies made it necessary to add York, Tappa- 
hannock, and Bermuda Hundred to the list, and to render the act 


81 Tefferson computed the Virginia debts owed to the British at the close of the war 
at fiom $10000 000 to $15,0007000, saying that her obligations were nearly as great 
at trom $10,000,00010 *> . » ' together. The amount, he wrote in January, 

was twimV orThirty toesas much Is all the money in circulation in Virginia. 
“Writing, " Memorial El, Vol. XVII, .07-33. See also Bemis, “Jays Treaty, 
Appendix IV. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


338 

applicable only to foreign trade and ships. Despite earnest profes¬ 
sions of a desire to support Congress, the Legislature broke up after 
making only a shabby excuse for meeting the latest Congressional 
requisition. In general, Madison thought that the session showed 
deplorable confusion and incompetence in Virginia’s government. 

But the final struggle over the religious question, precipitated at 
this session by the conservatives, resulted in their discomfiture. 
Recognizing the poverty into which the war had plunged the Angli¬ 
can church, they brought forward two bills in its interest. One was 
for the incorporation of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia, 
giving it legal title to the church buildings, glebes, and other prop¬ 
erty in its possession. The other, the general assessment bill, would 
simply place Virginia in the path then followed by the three New 
England States least liberal in religion. We shall later relate how 
that fall Madison, against great odds, had the general assessment 
measure deferred for another year; how he and his aides used the 
interim to conduct an impressive campaign of education; and how 
he finally, in the fall of 1785, killed the bill by showing that the 
majority in the State was thoroughly aroused against it. We also 
relate how, striking while the iron was hot, Madison brought forward 
Jefferson’s old bill for religious freedom, and had it passed. 

By mere chance another great reform failed at the close of 1785. 
The high sense of honor among Virginians made it impossible for 
many to think of giving up the struggle for an equitable settlement 
of the British debts. These men profited by the elevation of Henry 
from a seat in the Assembly to the Governorship, where he could no 
longer interfere, and by the fact that during the year 1785 Speaker 
John Tyler was half converted to their position. A bill was intro¬ 
duced providing for payment of the debts in seven annual install¬ 
ments, and it had the endorsement of a majority of the Legislature; 
some British merchants made an effort to have liquidation com¬ 
pelled in four instalments, but this concession the majority refused. 
The measure passed the House, where Madison championed it, but 
met with obstructions in the Senate which delayed it until past the 
usual time for adjournment—that is, until the beginning of Janu¬ 
ary. Finally, the two chambers having agreed, the bill was voted 
by the upper chamber, and was ready for return to the lower, to be 
received, examined, and signed by the two Speakers. At that junc¬ 
ture occurred a contretemps which illustrated the uncertainty of 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 339 

travel in those days. Several legislators braved the wintry weather 
to cross the James River—as yet unbridged—from Richmond to 
Manchester for the evening, intending to return the next day. But 
a freezing night made it impossible to row back, and the Legisla¬ 
ture could not find a quorum. It waited three days in the hope of 
moderate weather or a display of heroism by the absentees, and then 
disgustedly broke up. 32 

Nevertheless, the victory of Jefferson’s bill for religious liberty 
showed that the reaction against reaction had now arrived, and the 
democratic impulse registered itself at new heights. In 1784, the 
year that Madison renewed the demand of interior Virginia for con¬ 
stitutional reform, Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia,” containing an 
elaborate exposition of the constitutional abuses existent in the State, 
had been published in Paris in an edition of 200 copies for distribu¬ 
tion among friends, chiefly in Virginia, and its influence soon began 
to be felt there. The next year the Methodists and Quakers pre¬ 
sented petitions to the Legislature for the abolition of negro slavery, 
and a bill for the encouragement of manumission was actually passed. 
An attempt by the Tidewater to return the capital to Williamsburg, 
on the ground that its removal had been simply to meet the perils 
of the war, was defeated. Petitions were received in 1785 and the 
subsequent years for the repeal of the act incorporating the Episcopal 
Church and guaranteeing its property, and it ultimately was annulled. 

Henceforth, the advanced ideas of democracy rooted themselves 
more and more firmly in Virginia. In the lowland region there was 
a steadfast cohort of conservatives, but changes occurred even there, 
for many families were impoverished by the war and moved away to 
give place to overseers or new settlers. The power of the planter 
oligarchy had been shaken ten years before the Revolution, it had 
been dealt heavy blows by the war, and now economic changes and 
movements of population were destroying it except as it was bul¬ 
warked by the Constitution and by its superior education. 

Henry retired from the Governorship in November, 1786, and 
was succeeded by a native of Williamsburg, Edmund Randolph, who 
had been a member of the Continental Congress and Attorney- 
General. The Randolphs were one of the proudest of Virginia’s 
families* tracing their lineage among the English gentry back to 

82 Madison’s “Writings,” II, 114-16; Henry, “Henry,” III, 265-67; Hening, XI, 
402 ff. 


340 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Plantagenet times. Already Edmund Randolph had had an eventful 
career, passing his childhood at Tazewell Hall, studying at William 
and Mary, and parting from his father in 1775 when the latter, a 
loyal King’s Attorney, returned to England while the youth became 
an aide to Washington. His future career was to reach its climax 
in his appointment as Washington’s Secretary of State, and his resig¬ 
nation under the disgrace of the Fauchet affair. He was not a man 
of forceful character, but his election was regarded by the radicals 
as a gain. It pleased Jefferson; it also pleased Washington, for 
Randolph believed in an energetic national government, and Wash¬ 
ington wanted a Governor of such creed now that “our affairs seem to 
be drawing to an awful crisis.” 33 It displeased R. H. Lee and 
Colonel Theodorick Bland, who, as rival candidates for the con¬ 
servative wing, were defeated for the office. Both these men a little 
later were consistent opponents of the Federal Constitution, while 
Randolph in his vacillating way first helped make it, then attacked 
it, and finally urged its ratification. He was succeeded in 1788 by 
Beverly Randolph, who had sat in the Assembly during the Revolu¬ 
tion, had risen to be Lieutenant-Governor, and had thus reached 
the chair by simple promotion. Beverly Randolph had less ability 
than his relative, but he also leaned toward the progressive party in 
State affairs, and he gratified Madison by a qualified support of the 
Constitution. 

Among the chief political questions in the three years 1785-88 
were the repeal of the Incorporation Act; constitutional reform, 
bringing the east and west into direct conflict; internal improve¬ 
ments, accentuating this clash; and the State tariff, further intensify¬ 
ing it. The time was not ripe for alterations of the Constitution to 
do the West justice, and nothing could be accomplished except to 
register the marked grievance of the uplands and the Shenandoah 
Valley. As for internal improvements, however, the movement for 
them was in a vigorous infancy, and scored several successes. 

The isolated settlers of the interior were desirous of having the 
Potomac and James made navigable above the fall line, and roads 
built over the Blue Ridge. At the autumn session of the Legislature 
in 1784 Washington appeared to use his influence for improvements 
in navigation, and helped establish that year the Potomac Com¬ 
pany and the James River Company. The Legislature at once 

88 Conway’s “Randolph,” 59. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 341 

chartered both, and granted them a limited subsidy. Washington, 
Madison, and Jefferson saw in such improvements a means of linking 
the western settlements with the east, and thus binding the nation 
together, but the western settlers thought only of pocketbook con¬ 
siderations. Thousands had never seen a wagon, for the rude trails 
would admit only a horse and pack. Even around Richmond at the 
end of the Revolution there were no roads which would now be 
thought worthy of the name. It required two days to traverse the 
sixty-odd miles between that “filthy place,” as R. H. Lee called it in 
1783, and the old capital, Williamsburg, while as late as 1790 
Jefferson wrote that the way from Richmond northward was so bad 
that he could never travel more than three miles an hour, and at 
night could go but one. To lift the tobacco of Augustus County, in 
the Shenandoah, to market, cost more than the crop would usually 
bring, for it required a fortnight to traverse one hundred miles with 
one of the clumsy four-horse or six-horse wagons, produce-laden, of 
the time . 34 

The Tidewater legislators, on the other hand, saw little benefit to 
their constituents in the opening of the upper reaches of the James 
and the Potomac. Ships of heavy burden could pass up the Potomac 
for nearly three hundred miles; on the James, vessels of 125 tons 
could ascend to within a mile of Richmond; the Rappahannock 
afforded two fathoms of water to Fredericksburg; and flatboats could 
navigate the Appomattox as far as Petersburg, the Pamunkey for 
seventy miles, and the Chickahominy for twenty-four miles. The 
population served by these waters shrank from the taxation involved 
in heavy subsidies to internal improvement companies. Its repre¬ 
sentatives held the public aid down to a subscription of $22,000 
worth of the shares in the Potomac Company, $20,000 worth in the 
James Company, and a direct appropriation of $3333 a road 
reaching inland from the upper Potomac. Moreover, they had to 
be placated by the inclusion in the program of the appointment, of 
commissioners to investigate the problem of canal communication 
between Elizabeth River and North Carolina waters, with a view to 
augmenting Norfolk’s trade. The modest scheme then passed, 
Madison wrote, with “precipitancy,” the first step upon a path that 
was to prove long and troubled. 

A greater bitterness was displayed in the Legislature over the 

*4 See Beveridge’s “Marshall,” I, Ch. 7 * 


342 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


State tariff. The west, wishing to see large eastern cities built up 
to afford an urban market for its raw products, supported the law 
for restricting the number of ports of entry, whether for goods or 
immigrants, to five, and succeeded also in placing a duty upon all 
imports of wine, rum, cheese, beef, pork, iron, and hemp. To both 
measures the east, which wished prices upon all these commodities 
kept low, offered a stubborn resistance under George Mason and 
other of their old leaders, and it soon obtained the repeal of both. 
Madison in the fall of 1786 was half inclined to rejoice over the 
return of Mason to the Assembly, and half inclined to lament it, 
because the repeal of the Port Act would certainly be one condition 
“on which we are to receive his valuable assistance.” The west 
also asked, much more than the east, for extensions of time in the 
payment of taxes, and for the right to compound for them in farm 
produce. Both the postponements and commutations were re¬ 
peatedly granted, though leaders concerned for the State’s financial 
stability combated them as far as circumstances allowed. Madison, 
the foremost of such leaders, had to admit after nearly four years of 
peace that “the trade of this country is in a deplorable condition,” 
and “ruinous” to agriculturists, and in 1788 that “our specie has 
vanished,” and “the people are again plunged in debt to the 
merchants.” 35 Some concessions were unavoidable. 

In all, a mixed political situation existed when the struggle for the 
Constitution began. The west desired internal improvements, and 
it furnished the driving power for most of the social reforms won, 
but its progressiveness was limited by the facts that it had a less 
educated intelligence than the east, that it harbored a warm feeling 
against sound money and sound treasury administration, and that 
it was inclined to be anti-federal. The lowlands were against State 
constitutional reform and for the most part against radical social 
changes, but they showed a general appreciation of the need for a 
strong national government. Leaders like Madison were unable to 
tell, in advance of actual debate on many of the issues, who would 
be against them and who for them. Thus it was that in trying to 
strengthen the national government, Madison joined hands with such 
past political opponents as Pendleton and such future opponents as 
Marshall, while he contended against such former allies as George 
Mason and such future allies as Monroe. 


35 “Writings,” II, 151 . 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 343 

To understand the conflict between federalists and anti-federalists 
in 1787-88 we must go back to the years 1783-84, when federalist 
principles and plans began to meet their test. We have noted that 
Virginia’s action upon the impost plan was unsatisfactory, but to 
Madison even Virginia’s partial, suspended compliance was some¬ 
thing to be thankful for. Other States in some instances did no 
better, and if all had done as well, the financial perplexities of the 
Confederation would have been much reduced. The Legislature in 
the fall of 1783, rather in hatred of the British than from any wish 
to invigorate the general government, also consented to the request 
of Congress for authority to enact commercial regulations in retalia¬ 
tion against Great Britain. 

The most important victory in 1783, however, was Virginia’s 
surrender of her claims to the Northwest Territory, accomplished at 
this same fall session after spirited debate and by the close vote of 
53 to 41. The State’s original offer to the nation on January 2, 1781, 
had been encumbered by seven main conditions—that Virginia be 
repaid for the cost of conquering the Illinois country, that Clark 
and his men be given a quantity of land there, that the promises of 
bounty lands for Virginians in the Continental Line be met, that 
friendly inhabitants be protected, that the unappropriated lands be 
used for the national good, that the region in due time be laid off into 
States, and that Virginia be guaranteed her Kentucky domain. A 
compromise was now arranged, Virginia giving up substantially 
everything but her demands for reimbursement and for the bounty 
lands. Madison was not in the Assembly when this great cession 
was made, but George Mason labored unceasingly for the settle¬ 
ment. 36 Much resentment was shown throughout the State, and 
several legislators who were accused of making a profit from the 
transfer—three great land companies had obtained tracts in the 
ceded region in contravention of the Virginia laws were defeated 
by their constituents the following year. 

In 1784 another notable victory was won for the national idea. 
The lawless frontiersmen at this time needed a sharp restraint from 
acts which were an infraction of the treaties of the United States 
with European nations or with Indian tribes. Mason wrote in the 
fall of 1784 that “we are every day threatened by the eagerness of 
our disorderly citizens for Spanish plunder and Spanish blood,” and 

30 Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 64-65. 


344 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


six weeks later that there was no concealing the danger “of our being 
speedily embroiled with the nations contiguous to the United States, 
particularly the Spaniards, by the licentious and predatory spirit of 
some of our Western people.” Virginia pioneers hated any Spaniard, 
while many of them would murder an Indian in cold blood. The 
remedy, when European subjects were the victims, was a law pro¬ 
viding that whenever a Power offered evidence that the perpetrator 
of a crime on its territory had fled to Virginia, Virginia should, at 
the instance of Congress, surrender him. The bill which Madison 
introduced provided this, and also that under certain circumstances 
Virginia should herself try any citizen who committed a crime on 
foreign soil against the people of a friendly nation or tribe. 37 

This measure was a bitter pill for the individualistic westerners, 
to whom extradition seemed an infraction of the basic right of trial 
by a jury of the vicinage; while Tyler and some other Tidewater 
legislators joined the frontier in its opposition. But Madison found 
an unexpected ally in Patrick Henry, who was concerned not for 
America’s foreign relations but for the Indian. The orator was an 
unfaltering friend of the noble red man. One of his pet schemes was 
a fantastic plan, which he induced the Legislature to support this 
year by bounties, for promoting intermarriage between Indians and 
whites, and thus producing what he predicted would be a superior 
race. Only Henry’s support carried the extradition bill, and then 
only by a majority of one vote. Henry’s attitude toward Congress 
at this time was far friendlier than in 1788. In 1784 Madison 
thought him “strenuous for invigorating the Federal government, 
though without any precise plan,” and this year he wrote a resolu¬ 
tion and had it passed declaring that whenever any State persistently 
failed to meet the Congressional requisitions, Congress ought to have 
power to collect the money by distraint upon the property of the 
State or its citizens. He and George Clinton went through the same 
change of attitude. 

The success of the impost plan, the extradition bill, the measure to 
permit regulation of commerce by Congress, and the cession of the 
Northwest Territory, thus showed that up to 1785 the dominant 
sentiment of Virginia was friendly to a vigorous central government. 
It will also be recalled that at the end of 1785 the bill to fulfill the 
peace treaty by arranging a settlement of the British debts came 

• T Madison’s “Writings,” II, 98-99; Hening, XI, 471. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 345 


within a hair’s breadth of succeeding. What produced the reversal 
which made Virginia’s ratification of the Constitution so doubtful? 
What made Patrick Henry and the men of the west firm opponents 
of the Constitution? The factors were several, but the most im¬ 
portant was the question of American navigation of the Mississippi, 
which wrought all western Virginia and Kentucky to a high pitch 
of excitement and anger. 

The Mississippi question was as simple as it was important. The 
preliminary treaty with Great Britain contained certain public 
articles, and one secret article, defining the boundaries of the United 
States on one side, and of Louisiana and the Floridas on the other, 
and declaring that the Mississippi should always be open to British 
and Americans alike. The secret article, which soon became known, 
was particularly offensive to Spain, for it provided for the possibility 
of England holding West Florida under the final treaty. Moreover, 
Spain deemed her authority over the mouth of the Mississippi 
absolute. In 1784 Madrid declared that until it was ready to admit 
that the boundaries between its possessions and the United States 
were truly described in the treaty, it would maintain its claim to the 
exclusive control of the Mississippi, and would under no circum¬ 
stances permit American craft to pass up or down. This intelligence, 
communicated formally to Congress on November 19, produced the 
greatest indignation in the South and West. None felt more strongly 
than the people of western Virginia; and Patrick Henry caused the 
Legislature to resolve, at the end of 1784, “that it is essential to the 
prosperity and happiness of the western inhabitants of this common¬ 
wealth to enjoy the right to navigate the river Mississippi.” 

When in the summer of 1785 Don Diego Gardoqui arrived as a 
Spanish agent to draft a treaty of commerce and amity, Congress 
explicitly instructed Jay to insist in the firmest manner upon the 
free use of the river. It is unnecessary to follow these negotiations 
in detail, protracted and unsatisfactory as they were, or to describe 
the deep anxiety with which the South hung upon them. The people 
knew that Spain might refuse to conclude a liberal commercial treaty 
except on condition that the Mississippi was closed, and they knew 
also that New England prized the trade with Spain, and cared nothing 
for the western waters. 

Month by month, as the parleys dragged on, migration was making 
the question more serious for the South. Settlers were pouring into 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


346 

the trans-Allegheny region of Virginia at a rate that by 1790 gave 
it a population of 100,000. Landless men and land-hungry small 
owners streamed out of the Piedmont region of Virginia and North 
Carolina; sons of Tidewater families sought fortune there; adven¬ 
turers, hunters, and trappers “squatted” upon the great tracts un¬ 
claimed or owned by foreign and eastern capitalists; and European 
immigrants pushed direct down the Ohio, or came into the Shenan¬ 
doah and were drawn westward by the glowing reports of rich land. 
The western reaches had begun to trade with the Spanish settle¬ 
ments as early as 1782, when one Jacob Yoder left Redstone, a 
village on the Monongahela, with a boatload of flour to be sold in 
New Orleans; took furs in New Orleans and sold them in Havana; 
and brought sugar from Havana to Philadelphia, thus blazing a long 
and perilous but profitable path. 38 All Virginia, but particularly the 
region inland from the “fall line,” felt for the economic rights of 
the trans-Allegheny settlers, and nearly everyone foresaw the brilliant 
future of the Southwest. 

There was hence the greatest indignation when early in 1786 indi¬ 
cations began to appear that the closing of the Mississippi, with the 
consent of the North, was a dire possibility. Monroe, sitting in 
Congress at New York, wrote Madison on May 31 that he had no 
sooner arrived in the city the previous winter than he had learned 
that Jay wished to be relieved of his instructions to demand free 
navigation of the river, and that a strong party was supporting Jay. 
Confirmation of Monroe’s disquieting reports soon came with the 
news, first, that a Kentucky flatboat, captained and loaded with 
goods by a certain Thomas Amis, had been seized June 6, 1786, by 
the Spaniards at Natchez; and second, that on August 3, 1786, Jay 
had, in presenting some tardy results of his negotiations, urged upon 
Congress that in view of the value of Spanish amity and of the ocean 
trade with Spain, the United States should surrender the navigation 
of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years. 

It seemed to most Virginians that the eight northern States were 
deliberately planning the mutilation and injury of the South to 
gain a few dollars, for they felt with Jefferson that the abandonment 
of the Mississippi “is an act of separation between the eastern and 
the western country.” They were ready to believe that the North 
would even break up the Confederation before it would be balked of 

88 Hulbert, “Historic Highways,” IX, 123-24. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 347 

its object. In transmitting to Governor Harrison a full account of 
the Jay-Gardoqui affair as he had seen it from his Congressional 
vantage-point, Monroe added that a secret plan was even then being 
considered by committees of northern members of Congress to parti¬ 
tion the Union and set the South adrift. 

Inevitably, a powerful party arose in Virginia, headed by Patrick 
Henry, which believed that the manifestation of sectional cross¬ 
interests and selfishness in this Mississippi question proved that a 
stronger Union was impracticable. Madison, who had fought for 
the Southern standpoint in Congress, saw with dark forebodings the 
result of Jay’s proposal in his State. To Jefferson he wrote from 
Philadelphia of the postponement of the assertion of American rights 
on the Mississippi: “Passing by other States, figure to yourself the 
effect of such a stipulation on the Assembly of Virginia, already 
jealous of Northern politics, and which will be composed of about 
thirty members from the western waters, of a majority of others 
attached to the western country from interests of their own, of their 
friends or their constituents, and of many others who though in¬ 
different to the Mississippi, will zealously play off the disgust of its 
friends against Federal measures. Figure to yourself its effect on 
the people at large on the western borders, who are impatiently 
waiting for a favorable result to the negotiations with Gardoqui, 
and who will consider themselves as sold by their Atlantic brethren. 
Will it be an unnatural consequence if they consider themselves 
absolved from every Federal tie, and court some protection for 
their absolved rights? This protection will appear more attainable 
from the maritime power of Great Britain than from any other 
quarter. . . .” 39 The justification for this view was writ large in 
the events that followed. 

Governor Henry sent a warning to the people of Kentucky, and 
urged them to take steps to protect their rights. Meetings were 
held in the trans-Allegheny region, committees of correspondence 
were formed, and not only were measures adopted to stop the trade 
of all Spaniards on the upper Mississippi, but a hotheaded scheme 
was formed for an expedition under George Rogers Clark to drive 
them from its lower extent. When the autumn meeting of the Legis¬ 
lature in 1786 approached, there was no doubt that it would ener¬ 
getically assert the rights of the South and West. “Indeed,” Madison 

39 Rives, “Madison,” II, 119-20; for Monroe’s communications, see his Writings, 
I, 144 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


348 

wrote Monroe, “the only danger is that too much resentment may 
be indulged by many against the Federal councils.” The Kentucky 
members presented a memorial asking for assistance. On November 
29 the House unanimously passed resolutions declaring the American 
right to use the Mississippi, characterizing its surrender as dis¬ 
honorable, and stating of the nation that “a sacrifice of the rights 
of any one part to the supposed or real interests of another part 
would be a flagrant violation of justice,” and a direct contravention 
of the end for which the Federal government was erected. 

Some Virginians, to be sure, took the other side. Though R. H. 
Lee was with western Virginia in opposing a strongly centralized 
national government, he suddenly swung against it on the Mississippi 
question, thinking the commercial treaty with Spain too highly 
valuable; and he lost his seat in Congress because he actually voted 
with Jay’s faction there. 40 Washington himself leaned toward Jay’s 
view, believing the navigation of the Mississippi not important until 
the western country was more thickly populated. Moreover, the 
threatened treaty with Spain was never concluded, the wrath of the 
Virginians slowly cooled, and in time, though not for some years, 
it was allayed by vigorous and effective measures to give them the 
use of the Mississippi. But meanwhile the harm had been done: the 
indignation of many citizens had guaranteed their unbending opposi¬ 
tion to all plans for a more perfect union, and had rendered others 
lukewarm. Madison had been declaring that the interests of all 
parts of the United States, including the West, would be better served 
if more power were granted to Congress, and here was flat evidence 
to the contrary. In Virginia’s ratifying convention, no subject was 
adverted to oftener than the Mississippi. “This new government, I 
conceive,” said Henry, with his most impressive tyranny-scenting 
manner, “will enable those States who have already discovered their 
inclination that way, to give away this river.” Grayson said the same 
thing, adding: “This contest for the Mississippi involves the great 
national contest . . . whether one part of the continent shall govern 
the other.” 41 

40 Journal House of Delegates, 66-67. R. H. Lee at first spoke cf the Atlantic fish¬ 
eries and the navigation of the Mississippi as the two legs on which the republic must 
stand; but for evidence of his change of position with regard to the Mississippi—“if 
this navigation could be opened and the benefits be such as are chimerically supposed, 
it must in its consequences depopulate and ruin the Old States”—see “Letters,” Bal- 
lagh Edition, II, 4*0-27. For the plot of Gen. Tames Wilkinson and others to separate 
Kentucky from the Union, see R. M. McElroy T s “Kentucky in the Nation’s History,” 
Ch. 4. 

41 Elliot’s “Debates,” V, 151-52, 365. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 349 
IV. Ratification in Virginia 

The struggle over the Constitution produced a marked realignment 
of political forces. From the beginning of the movement for a Con¬ 
stitutional Convention, which had been first fairly launched in Vir¬ 
ginia in 1786, Madison and Washington had influential Virginians 
with them. The most noteworthy of the young men were John 
Marshall, a son of the frontier—he had been reared in a valley of 
the Blue Ridge—who in the House and the Council of State had 
made a considerable public reputation; George Nicholas, already 
known as one of the State’s ablest lawyers, and a man of influential 
family; and Harry Innes, who, though yet in his early thirties, had 
been legislator, judge, and in 1785 had become Attorney-General. 
Prominent among the older workers for a stronger national govern¬ 
ment were Edmund Pendleton, now nearly sixty-five, and “Light- 
Horse Harry” Lee, the veteran soldier, who in 1786 was sent to the 
Continental Congress. Madison’s associates at the Annapolis Con¬ 
vention in September, 1786, were Edmund Randolph and St. George 
Tucker, of whom the former in especial was eager to see the Articles 
of Confederation amended. 

By the time the Federal Convention met, it was possible to foresee 
how the different sections of Virginia would incline to regard its 
work. Broadly speaking, it was evident that the westerners, indi¬ 
vidualists to the core, and aroused by the Mississippi controversy, 
would oppose a closely centralized form of government; and that 
the Tidewater, which saw a hope of renewed political power in the 
change, would support it. It was known that Madison, so recently 
a bitter enemy of the Tidewater political school, would head that 
section in his fight for the Constitution, and that Henry, a few years 
before hand in glove with the lowland conservatives, would be 
chieftain of the irreconcilable democrats of the mountain and the 
trans-Allegheny districts. We must remember that it was only a 
month before the Annapolis meeting that Jay had made his weak- 
kneed proposal for an agreement with Gardoqui. 

Five of Virginia’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention— 
Washington, Mason, Edmund Randolph, Wythe, and James Blair 
were Tidewater representatives; two, Madison and Henry, were not. 
A pointblank refusal came from Henry to serve in any body that 
purposed the strengthening of the Union at the expense of State 


350 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


powers, while both Governor Randolph and George Mason, though 
staying in the Convention to the end, refused to sign the Constitu¬ 
tion. When the Convention broke up on September 17, 1787, 
therefore, three of the four delegates who returned to advocate 
ratification were Tidewater men, while Madison had been born 
within the Tidewater and now lived not far from it. 

The contest was thus defined at an early date as one between 
the lowlands on the one hand, and the Piedmont and Kentucky on 
the other, each struggling to win the doubtful Shenandoah Valley 
and the northernmost part of the trans-Allegheny region, in what is 
now West Virginia. In some respects it was a simple continuation 
of the old struggle between the conservatives and the western radi¬ 
cals, though there were many complicating currents. If we turn 
from the geographical division to the division among occupational 
and economic interests, here also we can make qualified generaliza¬ 
tions. The planters were for the Constitution; the lawyers and 
judges were for the most part in favor of it; and the old soldiers, 
from their predilection for strength and authority, largely supported 
it. The pioneers were almost to a man against it, and the great 
majority of small upland farmers were in the opposition. The 
debtor class, and especially the many debtors who owed money to 
the British, were alarmed by the fear that the Constitution would 
make payment of their obligations at face value unescapable, while 
thousands of settlers who had taken land confiscated by the State 
from Crown grantees were apprehensive that their titles would be 
endangered. Madison’s father reported that most of the Baptists 
were hostile, and the Episcopalians friendly. 

The election of delegates to the ratifying Convention occurred 
early in 1788, after prolonged public discussion. At the close of 
1787 Charles M. Thurston, a legislator, wrote the mayor of Win¬ 
chester concerning the Constitution: 42 

I will place at the head of those for it Judge Pendleton, who is looked up to as 
president of the Convention to be held in June, Nicholas, Wythe, Blair, the Pages, 
Johnson, Stuart, Hervie, Jones, Wood, and a multitude of others. Against it—first, 
as the leader of this party, Henry, Mason, Governor Randolph, Lawson, John Taylor, 
wifh most of the general court lawyers and many of the judges, the Nelsons, R. H. 
Lee (in many instances, father against son), and many others. In a word, the divi¬ 
sion of the multitude is great; but after all, it appears to me, the party in favor of 
the Constitution must prevail. The signature and approbation of our great Wash¬ 
ington will give it a preponderancy to weigh down all opposition. 

42 Cf. Madison, “Writings,” XI, 252; Grigsby, “Hist, of the Va. Fed. Conv.,” I, 
34 ff. Thurston s letter is in the Providence Gazette, Jan. 12, 1788. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 351 


Madison at the same time, writing to Jefferson, described “the 
body of the people” as favorable to the Constitution, though he 
feared some changes might be produced by the united influence of 
Henry, R. H. Lee, George Mason, and Governor Randolph. Wash¬ 
ington in April told Lafayette that he thought the Convention would 
ratify. On the other hand, Henry believed that four-fifths of the 
Virginians opposed the Constitution, and that south of the James 
nine-tenths were against it. One shrewd merchant in Virginia was 
apprehensive of defeat for the instrument, pointing out to his patrons 
in Philadelphia that two groups were fighting it, men with power 
and unwilling to surrender it, and men without money who feared 
the Constitution would force them to pay their debts. The most 
careful estimate that has been made is that two-thirds of the State 
was actually hostile to the Constitution. The great majority of 
voters had never read it, nor heard an honest, able analysis of it, 
but instinctively they disliked anything that weakened the familiar 
State government, and invigorated a strange, distant power. Even 
some of the delegates to the Convention had not read the Constitu¬ 
tion. 

But the federalists made a better showing in the elections than 
anyone had expected. Henrico County, containing Richmond, was 
anti-federalist. Three candidates there stood for two seats—Gover¬ 
nor Edmund Randolph, supposedly against the Constitution, the 
popular John Marshall, for it, and the unpopular William Foushee, 
bitterly opposed to it. Randolph had 373 votes, Marshall 198, and 
Foushee 187, the first two being elected; 43 and as Randolph finally 
switched to support the Constitution, the county was happily mis¬ 
represented. Madison, arriving home the day before the Orange 
County election, might have been defeated but for a happy chance 
by which he met and converted an influential Baptist minister. Best 
of all, in counties distinctly hostile some fair-minded men, not afraid 
in the end to defy their constituents, were chosen. Henry exerted 
himself feverishly, spreading such unfounded reports as that the 
acceptance of the Constitution would mean loss of the Mississippi 
and the restoration of the religious Establishment, but though his 
success made Madison nervous, others maintained their confidence. 
We have a letter from a Virginian to a Bostonian, declaring: 44 

43 Md. Journal, March n, 1788. See a Fredericksburg letter in the Md. Journal, 
April 11, 1788, predicting the success of the opponents of the Constitution in 
approaching Convention. 

44 Md. Journal, April 8, 1788. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


35 2 

Our Governor has expressed quite different sentiments regarding the new Consti* 
tution, since its adoption by your state. Although the majority [in Massachusetts] 
was small, yet the. speeches of some of the minority after its adoption [i.e., their 
acquiescence without party rancor] have gained more proselytes to federalism here 
than if the majority had been much larger, and the Convention had dissolved with 
any animosity. . . . Most of those now opposed to it, are persons whose estates are 
much involved, by owing large British debts, which they think must be paid when 
we have a Federal head. But as Governor Randolph now speaks in favor of it, and 
as he has much influence, I am confident that it will not only be adopted, but by a 
very respectable majority. North Carolina follows of course. 

Madison wrote Jefferson a fortnight later, declaring that it seemed 
probable that “a majority of the members elect are friends of the 
Constitution.” The region north of the Rappahannock, he said, had 
generally elected federalists, and so had the Shenandoah, while the 
counties south of the James had seated anti-federalists; the northern 
transmontane section was largely federalist, the territory between the 
James and Rappahannock was “much chequered,” and Kentucky 
would probably divide. The contest in the Convention was exceed¬ 
ingly close, and the federalists triumphed not by force of numbers 
but by better tactics and stronger arguments. Madison, Wythe, 
Marshall, Nicholas, Pendleton and Blair led their forces with masterly 
skill, seizing with avidity on the opportunity Mason offered them of 
debating each clause of the Constitution in detail. Henry had elo¬ 
quence, Monroe and Grayson had persistency, and Mason had 
dignity, but their party could offer no minds to match those of 
Madison and Marshall, and no influence to equal that exerted by the 
absent Washington. In the final vote, after three weeks and two 
days of deliberation, the 89 delegates who carried ratification were 
furnished by the lower Tidewater, the upper Tidewater, the Shenan¬ 
doah, and a region which now embraces five West Virginia counties. 
The 79 opposing votes came in the main from the Piedmont and 
Kentucky. A number of the delegates voted for the Constitution in 
flat defiance of the wish of their counties. Mason and Monroe sadly 
agreed that the chief single factor in their defeat had been Washing¬ 
ton’s wishes. Even as it was, ratification might have been beaten 
had a letter which Governor Clinton sent to Virginia in behalf of 
the New York Convention been promptly laid before the delegates. 45 

Not even a brief lull followed the political strife which had 
attended the ratification of the Constitution. Though Henry had 
been worsted, he could still control the Legislature, and he intended 
to make trouble. The federalists had defeated by only eight votes a 

45 Conway’s “Randolph,” 110-12; Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 2768.; see Ambler, “Sec¬ 
tionalism in Virginia,” 58, for map. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 353 

motion to make ratification conditional upon the previous amend¬ 
ment of the Constitution; and Henry and Mason, with bad grace, 
had declared that they could not actively support the Constitution 
in its existing form. Under their auspices an effort was made to 
induce the anti-federalist minority of delegates to sign a mischievous 
address to the people. It was Henry’s hope that he could now, by 
employing all his energies, obtain a thorough revision of the instru¬ 
ment; and Madison wrote Jefferson that Henry’s friends entered into 
his scheme “with great zeal.” 

They showed their zeal when the Legislature met for its autumn 
session in 1788. Henry’s control of the House justified the adjective 
used by his enemies, “omnipotent.” Washington’s secretary, Tobias 
Lear, has accurately described this sway. “In one word, it is said 
that the edicts of Mr. H. are enregistered with less opposition in 
the Virginia Assembly than those of the Grand Monarch in his 
parliaments. He has only to say, Let this be law, and it is law.” 
This unchecked control by Henry, it should be explained, arose 
largely from the fact that so many of his opponents were now out 
of his way. In midsummer he had acquiesced in the Assembly’s 
election of Madison to the Continental Congress, partly because he 
did not care to stem the sentiment in Madison’s favor, but chiefly 
because he wished that leader put where he would give no trouble. 
Both George Nicholas and John Marshall were busy practising law; 
Pendleton and Wythe had returned to the bench; and Henry Lee was 
in Congress, while Edmund Randolph was too vacillating and too 
slight in parliamentary stature to be of great assistance to the feder¬ 
alists. With Henry, moreover, were ranged a number of men of 
considerable ability and influence—as Monroe, Ex-Governor Benja¬ 
min Harrison, and William Grayson, who had received an education 
at Oxford and in London, had been one of Washington’s aides, and 
had sat in the Continental Congress before he had opposed the Con¬ 
stitution in the State Convention. The federalist minority was led 
by inexperienced members and made only a weak fight. 

Just what was Henry’s program? On October 29, 1788, he de¬ 
clared his opposition to all measures for organizing the Federal 
Government unless they were accompanied by action looking to¬ 
wards amendment of the Constitution, an object which he thought 
required another national convention. He then procured the passage 
of resolutions asserting that “many of the great, essential rights of 


354 THE AMERICAN STATES 

freemen, if not cancelled, were rendered insecure under the Consti¬ 
tution, 1 ” and stating that to reassure the public and prevent “those 
disorders which must arise under a government not founded on the 
confidence of the people,” the new Congress should call a second 
Federal Convention to make alterations. The federalists proposed 
a sensible alternative. Before the State Convention had adjourned, 
it had drawn up a bill of rights and a score of articles as amendments 
to be urged upon the nation. Now a resolution was introduced calling 
upon Congress simply to submit these extensive amendments for 
ratification by the States. But it was beaten 85 to 39, and Henry’s 
program was carried without a division. It included the dispatch of 
a circular to the other States, and an answer to Governor Clinton. 

Henry also intended, in his battle for revision, to choose Congress¬ 
men obedient to his will. This had been evident before the Legisla¬ 
ture met. Washington had predicted in September, 1788, that 
Henry’s party would try to elect “so many of their own junto under 
the new government as, by the introduction of local and embarrassing 
disputes, to impede or frustrate its operation”; and had shown no 
little apprehension of the result. A divided delegation in Congress 
seemed fair to the federalists, but they had little hope of obtaining 
one of the Senatorships. Washington told visitors to Mount Vernon 
early in the fall that he was especially alarmed by the prospect that 
both Senators would be anti-federalists; the rumor being that Henry 
and R. H. Lee would be chosen. When the time for a choice by 
the Legislature came early in November, Henry nominated Lee and 
Grayson, and voiced an emphatic objection to Madison, who had 
been named by his friends rather against his own will. He even de¬ 
clared that Madison’s election might produce civil war in the State, 
referring to the temporary excitement caused by lying rumors that 
Madison advocated the surrender of the Mississippi, and was opposed 
to any Constitutional amendments. One of Madison’s friends ad¬ 
mitted a doubt whether he would obey legislative instructions touch¬ 
ing a question of the Federal tax power. “See, gentlemen,” ex¬ 
claimed Henry, “the secret is out—it is doubted whether Mr. Madi¬ 
son will obey his instructions!” Yet the election was unexpectedly 
close. Lee received 98 votes, Grayson 86, and Madison 77. 46 
Madison’s friends asserted that the tide was turning, and that if 


« There were 63 scattering votes. For testimony as to Henry’s dominance of the 
situation, see a Richmond letter in the Pa. Journal, Dec. 6, 1788. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 355 


the balloting had been delayed a few days, all Henry’s efforts to 
defeat him would have been in vain. They were discouraged, but 
Madison himself took the reverse philosophically. He had originally 
meant to stand for the House, but the Virginia federalists, from 
Washington down to Edward Carrington, had insisted that he would 
be more useful in the Senate. 

And now Henry undertook, by the first gerrymandering measure 
in the republic’s history, to blight Madison’s ambitions even for the 
House. 47 A legislative committee was appointed to divide Virginia 
into ten Congressional districts, and by Henry’s wish the district in 
which Madison must stand was made up, as one man put it, “of 
counties most tainted by anti-federalism.” Of the eight counties, 
five had sent anti-federal delegates to the recent Convention, and a 
sixth had divided its vote. Henry also had the Legislature decree 
that the choice of the people must be confined to a resident of their 
own district—an enactment that many believed unconstitutional, and 
that evoked from the federalists of other districts an offer to test it 
by nominating Madison. 48 It was understood that Monroe, already a 
popular politician, would be Madison’s opponent. Having arranged 
all this, Henry followed his custom of hastening back to his beloved 
Leatherwood estate, though it was only the middle of November. 
“And after he had settled everything relative to the government 
wholly, I suppose, to his own satisfaction,” wrote Tobias Lear, “he 
mounted his horse and rode home, leaving the business of the State 
to be done by anybody who chose to give themselves the trouble of 
attending to it.” He was as much the boss of the Virginia Legislature 
as Hancock had ever been boss in Massachusetts, or Clinton in New 
York, but he was not to be spared the sight of some matters going 
agley. 

However much Henry’s party controlled the Legislature, it was 
not certain of the electorate. The popular trend was toward accept¬ 
ance of the Constitution, especially as it was seen that Washington 
would head the new government and would have the help of the 
ablest men in the nation. The choice of Presidential electors in 
January, 1789, and of Representatives in Congress the next month, 


« For a defense of this measure, see Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 309 ®. 

48 See letter of G. L. Turberville to Madison in the Lenox MSS., N. Y. Public 
Library dated Nov. 13, 1788, in which Turberville says that when Henry brought 
in the gerrymandering measure, “without argument, or answering a single reason 
urged against it, [he] launched into a field of declamation, brought all the imaginary 
horrors of the new government upon us, and carried a decided and large majority 
with him.” 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


356 

was a heavy blow to the anti-federalists. Only three of the twelve 
electors turned out to be of their party, the Piedmont electing two 
and the Tidewater one. Only three of the ten Representatives, 
again, were theirs, coming also from the Piedmond and Tidewater. 

The contest between Madison and Monroe was genuinely spec¬ 
tacular. Upon examining the ground, Madison’s friends found a 
decided possibility of winning, declaring that the voters could be 
brought over to federalist views by a campaign in person. Monroe 
was no mean antagonist, for his insistence in Congress upon the 
right to navigate the Mississippi had won the gratitude of Virginians, 
and he had much personal attractiveness. Tall, rawboned, awkward, 
diffident, he nevertheless possessed rugged strength of character, 
kindliness, and democratic simplicity. He was in the field early, 
writing letters, making injurious allegations as to Madison’s views, 
and electioneering actively. It was necessary for Madison to show 
equal energy, but he long held back. Inclination and his apparent 
duty both summoned him to the winter session of the Continental 
Congress. Canvassing for votes he always despised, and tried to 
shun. In 1777 he had failed of election to the Legislature partly be¬ 
cause he would not canvass, partly because he would not stand treat 
with liquor. However, in the dead of December he came home over 
the frozen roads half an invalid, plunged into the battle in person, 
and thereafter spared no effort. He refused to dignify the mis¬ 
leading reports which were in circulation against him by a formal 
denial. But he wrote many letters explaining his position, made a 
speech-making tour of the district, with special attention to critical 
Culpepper County, and engaged in several joint debates with Monroe, 
who was palpably his inferior in logic and mental agility. There 
was never the slightest ill-will between the two, Monroe for his part 
professing to be reluctant to stand between Madison and Congress. 
Madison carried through later life a memento of one of his speaking 
trips, for while addressing a German audience in the snow outside a 
country church, his nose was frozen and permanently scarred. 

When the votes were counted, Madison was found victorious by 
the large majority of approximately 300. By his election to the 
House instead of the Senate his party profited in a degree which 
neither he nor Patrick Henry realized for some time. During the 
first decade of Federal history, the Senate counted for little, and the 
House for nearly everything and while Virginia’s Senators virtually 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE UPPER SOUTH 357 

disappeared from public view, Madison’s abilities soon made him 
the leader of the House. 

The result of the defeat of the anti-federalists in the Presidential 
and Congressional elections was to cripple them for years, and to 
force their chieftain into retirement. Henry was burdened by debts, 
and found it necessary to devote himself with unwonted diligence to 
the bar to store up a competence for old age, so that he practiced 
regularly, chiefly in Prince Edward County, for the next half dozen 
years. Much in demand, he was especially renowned for his power 
over juries in criminal cases; in civil cases he would seldom submit 
sufficiently to the drudgery of mastering complicated transactions. 
In 1794 he gave up all connection with either law or politics, and 
settled upon a fine estate overlooking the Staunton River to spend 
his last days in resting and supervising its cultivation. 49 

The Assembly remained anti-federalist, voting in 1790 almost two 
to one against a resolution approving the Federal assumption of 
State debts, electing Monroe in the same year to fill the vacancy in 
the United States Senate occasioned by Grayson’s death, and in 
general showing a united front against the measures of Hamilton 
and Madison; but there was nevertheless a coherent, forcible fed¬ 
eralist minority in its hall. Meanwhile, the amendments proposed 
by Madison had made the Constitution acceptable to the narrowest 
irreconcilables. The old divisions gave place to a resumption of still 
older cordialities in the State’s politics. George Mason, before his 
death in 1792, made overtures to Madison through Jefferson, and 
received Jefferson’s assurance of the young statesman’s esteem. “I 
have heard him say,” wrote Jefferson, “that though you and he 
appeared to be different in your systems, yet you were in truth 
nearer together than most persons who were classed under the same 
appellation”—which was quite true. 

« See the picture of his retirement in Howe, “Va. Hist. Colls.,” 221. 


CHAPTER NINE 


POLITICAL development: the lower south 

In their early political history no States offer a sharper contrast 
than North and South Carolina. From 1776 to 1780 they were 
governed in diametrically opposite spirit. The radicals of little 
property or wisdom obtained control in North Carolina, while in 
South Carolina the Constitution insured control by the patrician 
class of planters and merchants. It need not be said that North 
Carolina’s government during and after the war was short-sighted 
and demagogic. The people of other States, who knew that North 
Carolinians were poor, ill-educated, and of varied origin, were not 
surprised by this; they expected so little from the commonwealth 
that when William Hooper made a powerful speech in the Conti¬ 
nental Congress, other delegates showed amazement. Yet North 
Carolina had men who might have given her a sound administra¬ 
tion—men like Hooper, Samuel Johnston, Caswell, Davie, and Ire¬ 
dell—while her population, with all its faults, was the very stuff of 
democracy. South Carolina’s government was good but unpro¬ 
gressive. The Revolution did not throw it into the hands of the 
unfit but neither did the Revolution introduce half the healthy social 
and legal changes it introduced into Virginia. The State had no such 
exponent of a new order as Jefferson. 

North Carolina’s population was much the greater—at the first 
census her white inhabitants, almost 300,000, were approximately 
twice as numerous as those of South Carolina. The empty upland 
region of both States attracted settlers rapidly, but North Carolina’s 
was the larger and was nearer the main sources of emigration. It 
is against the background of this new, unstable, poor population of 
Scotch-Irish, Scotch, Germans, and English in the western counties 
that we can best understand the character of North Carolina’s 
government. 

I. North Carolina Politics to 1780 

Among the few groups of well-to-do conservatives, the chief place 
was taken by a set of leaders in the northeastern part of North 

358 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 359 

Carolina, just under the Virginia line. Edenton, founded in 1716, 
was the center here of a fertile region which lent itself to plantations 
of a Virginia type. Men called it the granary of the Province. It 
was bounded by swamps and the climate was humid, but among its 
streams and forests there was much good arable land. The oldest 
of the Edenton group, a planter, was Colonel John Harvey, long the 
Speaker, whose death in 1775 deprived the Whigs of their foremost 
leader. Another patriot who died early in the Revolution was 
Colonel Richard Buncombe, a rich gentleman of West Indian birth 
who was mortally wounded at Germantown. Thomas Jones, of 
Edenton, helped draft the Constitution of 1776, but was not there¬ 
after prominent. Joseph Hewes, a signer of the Declaration of In¬ 
dependence, was a Quaker merchant who had come to Edenton as 
partner in a trading company which owned its special wharf there. 

But the two men who made Edenton notable were Samuel Johnston 
and James Iredell. The former, born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1733, 
was a nephew of Governor Gabriel Johnston, the ablest of the 
Colony’s executives. He was early brought to America, obtained an 
elementary education in Connecticut, studied law, and was made 
clerk of the Superior Court of North Carolina in 1767, holding also 
the position of Naval Officer. Three years later he entered the Legis¬ 
lature, and became a Whig leader. Having inherited wealth, which 
he increased, and being of an aristocratic and studious character, he 
lived at “Hayes” much as George Mason lived at “Gunston Hall,” 
spending much time in the library of more than a thousand books 
which his uncle the Governor had begun. 1 Stern in appearance, 
lofty in manner, of a somewhat Puritanical rigidity, he was not 
popular, but he was respected. His protege and the husband of his 
sister was the much younger James Iredell, sprung from the family 
of Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s lieutenant, which altered its name at 
the Restoration. Iredell was born in Sussex a quarter-century before 
independence; at seventeen he obtained through court friends an 
appointment as controller of customs at Roanoke, and in 1768 
arrived at Edenton. The youth was ambitious, and found time to 
study law when not keeping the custom house books or acting as 
deputy for his principal London patron, who owned large tracts of 
North Carolina land. It was natural for Johnston, Harvey, Bun¬ 
combe, and Hooper, drawing plans for the first Provincial Congress, 

ir. D. W. Connor, “Hist. N. C.,” I, 206; 367 ff* 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


360 

to interest Iredell in them, and thenceforth his talents were, as far 
as his slender purse allowed, at the service of the State. 2 

Edenton, in short, though a town of only 400 people in plain 
frame houses, was a political and social center not to be sneered at, 
and Iredell’s letters and diary give us an interesting picture of its 
life just before the Revolution. Hornblow’s Tavern was a convivial 
gathering place, where cards and billiards were played for stakes. 
The town gentry and planters entertained at dinners and tea-parties, 
with dancing and backgammon. Boating expeditions went up the 
creeks; an occasional sleight of hand performer delighted “the 
dregs of the town,” and there was easy Southern preaching. The 
serious-minded men varied their legal and political studies by reading 
the ancient classics, the Spectator and other essays, Walpole’s histori¬ 
cal works, and the British magazines. Lovemaking—Sir Ned Dukin- 
field was Iredell’s rival for the hand of Hannah Johnston—gave op¬ 
portunity for the cultivation of Southern gallantry. This social life, 
as in many places in Colonial days, had a truly idyllic quality. 

In the opposite or southeastern comer of the State, the Cape Fear 
region, was another community which furnished many Revolutionary 
leaders. Wilmington, younger than Edenton, at the outbreak of the 
Revolution was slightly larger, and contained 180 houses by 1790. 
Here lived Cornelius Harnett, 3 the Sam Adams of North Carolina— 
except that he was wealthy while Adams was poor—who served in 
the Continental Congress from 1775 until shortly before his death 
in 1781. The principal conservative leader was William Hooper, a 
native of Boston, who graduated from Harvard at the head of his 
class, and became a North Carolina citizen in 1764; 4 John Adams 
in the first Continental Congress named Hooper with Henry and 
R. H. Lee as the foremost in oratorical talent. 5 A partner of 
Hooper’s in conservatism was Archibald Maclaine, a Scotch-born 
lawyer noted for his interest in science and letters, and for his hot 
temper. Hooper and Maclaine were in constant communication 
during and after the Revolution with Johnston and Iredell, each 
pair encouraging the other. Josiah Quincy, jr., after traveling from 
South Carolina into the Wilmington and Edenton districts in 1773, 
declared the northern Colony had more “men of genius, learning, 

3 McRee, “Life of Iredell,” I, passim. 

8 R. D. W. Connor, “Cornelius Harnett.” 

4 See James Murray, “Letters,” 114. 

* “Works,” II, 396. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 361 


and true wit, humor, and mirth.” 6 Outside the Cape Fear and 
Edenton groups, the only conservative who requires mention is Allen 
Jones, a planter of Halifax, at the fall line of the Roanoke River. 

The radicals were many, and made up in numbers what they 
lacked in ability. One of them had been a ringleader among the 
Regulators—Thomas Person, of Granville County, whose farm was 
ravaged by Try on’s army, and who was excepted from the general 
amnesty declared in 1771. 7 He was a surveyor, and before he died 
became the owner of 60,000 acres, but his sympathies were with the 
poor border population. John Penn, 8 a Virginian, was related to 
the patrician John Taylor of Caroline, and had read law with a 
cousin, Edmund Pendleton; but when in 1774 he crossed the 
boundary into Granville County, Penn identified himself with former 
Regulators like Person. Timothy Bloodworth was born in poverty 
in the Cape Fear region, and throughout his life his meagre and 
ill-assorted information exposed him to ridicule. He was by turns 
a preacher, blacksmith, farmer, doctor, watchmaker, wheelwright, 
and politician, and he really had a great deal of native ability. One 
of the few radical leaders who was rich was Willie Jones, of Halifax, 
the brother and opponent of Allen Jones. The two were sons of an 
agent and attorney for Lord Granville, one of the proprietary lords 
of North Carolina, and were educated at Eton. Though Willie 
Jones was a thorough democrat in politics, in his social life he was 
an aristocrat, who dressed well, lived sumptuously, raced, hunted, 
played cards, and was proud of his wealth and position; General 
Greene wrote in 1783 that he prostituted excellent talents to sport 
and pleasure. Thomas Burke, another extremist, was an impetuous, 
quick-tempered Irishman, who emigrated to Virginia, studied medi¬ 
cine and law, and just before the war removed to Hillsborough. 

It will be noted that most of North Carolina’s leading men were 
born elsewhere. In fact, the whole population was new—in 1706, 
it had been less than 6000. It will also be noted that environment 
had much to do with political opinion, two lowland settlements fur- 


e Mass Hist. Soc. Proceedings, June, 1916, p. 462. “In Charlestown and so 
through the Southern province I saw much apparent hospitality, much of what 19 
called good breeding and politeness, and great barbarity. In Brunswick Wilmington, 
Newbern Edenton and so through the North province there is real hospitality, less 

Z :hf. SSTTC* I9 o„ sketch of 


Jones, “Defence 
Person by S. B. Weeks. 

8 N. C. Booklet, September 


1904, sketch of Penn by T. M. Pittman. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


362 

nishing nearly all the conservative leaders. In most of the back 
country in 1775 the social characteristics were those of the frontier. 
The settlers paid little attention to inconvenient forms of law, and 
no more to tax-gatherers than they could help; educated men were 
rare; and no man acknowledged another’s superiority. A majority 
of uplanders had absolutely no ties with England. They wanted a 
government which would directly represent them, and in which the 
Legislature would overshadow the Governor. Their constant de¬ 
mand, from which the evident need for schools, roads, and a better 
defense could not budge them, was economy and low taxes. Of the 
70,000 free white males above sixteen years of age at the first census, 
less than 22,000 were in the three coastal districts of Edenton, New- 
bern, and Wilmington, while of the 54 counties, only 23 lay in 
these districts. The disproportion was not so great in 1776 and 
North Carolina was not a State in which it was easy to draw sec¬ 
tional lines, but the western radicals had an easy control. 

The choice made for the first Governor was excellent. Richard 
Caswell, chosen by the Provincial Congress which framed North 
Carolina’s Constitution (December 20, 1776) took possession after 
the Christmas holidays of the Governor’s palace built at New-Bern 
a decade before and called his first Council meeting for the middle 
of January. Politically, he was one of a number of moderate leaders, 
like Alexander Martin and Abner Nash, who stood neither with the 
radicals nor conservatives. He had led a wing of Try on’s army at 
the Alamance, and when the Revolution—he had been made a popu¬ 
lar hero by his victory over the Tories at Moore’s Creek Bridge— 
began he was regarded as distinctly hostile to some leaders of the 
west; but as it continued, his tendency was towards the left. His 
popularity is proved by the fact that he was elected Governor seven 
times, oftener than any successor. Nathaniel Macon, no mean judge, 
called him “one of the most powerful men that ever lived in this or 
any other country,” and his eminence in the Revolutionary period 
was deserved. Few men in the State had enjoyed so much political 
experience, for he had entered the Legislature in 1754; no one else 
had such sleepless ambition, both political and military. 9 The first 
State Legislature was elected in March, and began its session in 
April—thereafter, like Virginia’s, to hold at least a spring and fall 
session every year till the Revolution closed. 

•See R. D. W. Connor, “Makers of North Carolina,” 116; Connor’s “Hist. N. C.,” 
I, 419-20; Ashe’s “North Carolina,” I, 564. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 363 


At once there occurred the inevitable clash between the conserva¬ 
tive minority and the radical majority. Men had hoped there would 
be little party feeling, 10 but when the election of delegates to the 
next Congress began, harmony ended. The radical John Penn wished 
to succeed Hewes, who had served creditably at Philadelphia, had 
cast an almost decisive vote for independence, was a much older 
resident than Penn, and was a favorite of the conservative Edenton 
community. Penn attacked him with the outrageous charge that 
he had been too frequently absent from Congress, and that by ac¬ 
cepting a place on the Marine Committee of Philadelphia, he had 
held two posts at once. The westerners came to Penn’s support, and 
as a stinging rebuke to the conservatives, elected him to Hewes’s 
seat. 

Iredell, who had been appointed one of the commissioners to 
prepare bills for the first Legislature, thereupon wrote that he was 
sick of politics, that affairs were already in “a most melancholy 
train,” and that the best cause in the world was being “grossly in¬ 
jured by many of its conductors.” Samuel Johnston refused with 
asperity an election as one of the two State Treasurers. He wrote 
a friend that after seeing the new Legislature at work, he was as 
little pleased with it in practice as he had been in theory; and that 
he was more certain than ever that while a highly democratic govern¬ 
ment might suit a populous, educated, well-matured commonwealth, 
it was unsuited to North Carolina. He characterized many of the 
legislators as “fools and knaves, who by their low arts have worked 
themselves into the good graces of the populace,” and he did not 
abstain from mentioning individuals. “I saw with indignation such 
men as Griffith Rutherford, Thomas Person, and your colleague, J. 
Penn . . . principal leaders in both houses; you will not expect 
anything good or great . . . from the counsels of men of such nar¬ 
row, contracted principle, supported by the most contemptible 
abilities. Hewes was supplanted ... in Congress by the most in¬ 
sidious arts and glaring falsehoods, and Hooper, though no com¬ 
petitor appeared to oppose him, lost a great number of votes. 
Hooper, in fact, alleging financial reasons, but sharing his friends’ 
anger over the defeat of Hewes, refused to return to Philadelphia, 


10 Abner Nash, a member of the upper house wrote ten days after the session 
onened that “We are all harmony, and a perfectly good agreement, as far as I can 
se P e is likely to prevail in our houses of legislature.” N. C. State Records, XI, 720. 
Nash was a moderate, who was made Speaker. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


364 

where he had been a useful link between the New England members, 
with whom he was intimate, and the South. 11 

The autumn session of the Legislature in 1777 passed an act estab¬ 
lishing courts which was good because Iredell had drafted it, using 
earlier enactments as a model and receiving aid from Maclaine. 12 
But two of its three appointments to the bench were wretched. It 
could not pass over Iredell, whose legal knowledge and experience, 
with his judicial mind, well fitted him for the office. But for his 
colleagues it chose two unfit radicals, Samuel Ashe and Samuel 
Spencer. Ashe was a member of a well-known family, who had 
read law with an uncle, but never gained a mastery of it, and who 
was swayed on the bench by his strong prejudices. Spencer was an 
even less respectable figure. He had little legal training. As a 
clerk of the Anson County court in colonial days, his extortionate 
fees had aroused mob violence and led to a popular address of 
remonstrance. The choice of these mediocre men excited derision, 
which the bar from year to year was at little pains to conceal; but 
they clung to office, so that Spencer was able to play an evil role in 
helping delay the ratification of the Constitution. The Legislature 
was a Legislature of the people, and it was showing that the popular 
majority was ignorant and politically inexperienced. 

Throughout 1778-79, the legislators continued to enact many bad 
along with a few good laws. The able Caswell was twice reelected 
Governor, 13 and the able Abner Nash continued speaker of the 
Senate, but the House was dominated by Person and Willie Jones. 
No adequate measures were taken for defense. The regiments for 
the Continental Line filled so slowly that in the spring of 1778 the 
Legislature tried to force the counties to raise 2400 men for them; 
but even then the outfitting of the recruits was left to the local 
militia companies. That spring a short-sighted measure was passed 
to prohibit the export of beef, pork, or maize, one founded on an 
alleged “scarcity of provisions in this State,” but unjustifiable in the 

11 McRee’s “Iredell,” I, 358-59. 

13 N. C. State Records, XXIV, Introduction, and pp. 48 ff. 

18 Caswell saw that the conservatives were not wholly slighted. As S. A. Ashe 
says (“Hist. N. C.,” I, 643): “Caswell and his council tendered appointments to 
Samuel Johnston and other conservatives, as well as to their democratic friends. 
Allen Jones was year by year honored by the Assembly [he was elected speaker of 
the Senate repeatedly], while his brother, Willie, received no particular mark of its 
confidence, although Jones County was named for him. Iredell was appointed to the 
bench, and when he retired Maclaine, certainly a conservative, was elected. He 
declined, recommending John Williams, who was in high favor with the Assembly. 
On Avery’s resigning the office of attorney-general, Iredell was elected to that 
position.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 365 

blow it dealt the trade of North Carolina. Hundreds of wagons had 
yearly creaked over the rough roads to Charleston, and the State 
now badly needed the money and manufactures obtainable in return. 
In 1777 an act was passed for the full and final confiscation of Tory 
property, but it was found in the following year to be impracticable, 
and to require supplementary legislation. 

The financial legislation of North Carolina was somewhat cruder 
than that of most States. Excessive issues of paper money were 
made, without provision for gradual amortization of the debt, while 
the redemption of the paper which had been authorized by the Pro¬ 
vincial Congresses was postponed and repostponed. A general 
property tax for war purposes was early resorted to, but it was kept 
too low. 14 Thomas Person’s characteristic legislative services were 
bids for popularity by proposals for lower tax-rates and for reducing 
Governor Caswell’s salary. 15 In the spring of 1780 the State made 
a grant of $300 to each volunteer who responded to a call for 4000 
troops; 16 in other words, with an ill-collected tax of three-pence in 
the pound to fill the Treasury, a little force of 1500 men might cost 
the State $450,000 in bounties alone, no small sum even in depreci¬ 
ated currency. Hooper wrote Caswell: “Are we to ascribe it to a 
dearth of genius, or to the restraint imposed upon the press, that no 
pen appears to lash the public and private vices of this licentious 
State?” 

The purposes of the early confiscation legislation were carried out 
at the beginning of 1779 by a new law as faulty as it was drastic. 
Its deformities moved even Willie Jones to protest that “it involves 
such a complication of blunders and betrays such ignorance in legis¬ 
lation as would disgrace a set of hog-drovers.” The conservatives, 
supported by Cornelius Harnett’s strong influence, labored for sus¬ 
pending the confiscations, but as Iredell wrote, there was too much 
land in the opposite scale. The vengeful radicals wished to punish 
the Tories, they hoped to lighten their taxes by the sale of confiscated 
property, and some thought they could pick up the estates of former 
neighbors at a bargain. The House was actually milder than the 
Senate, which, wrote Iredell, “will not suffer any plan of moderation.” 

14 N. C. State Records, XXIV, 6 ff.; spring session, 1777. 

16 About 1777 Caswell wrote his friend Burke, the future Governor, that Person 
was “more troublesome this Assembly, if possible, than formerly.” N. C. Records, XI, 
470-71; see also N. C. Booklet, Vol. IV, No. 5. 

16 State Records, XXIV, 339; these men were to serve only three months. A 
bounty of $500 was offered recruits for the Continental battalions, to serve three 
years or the war; Idem , 337 - 39 * 



THE AMERICAN STATES 


366 

Sold at auction, the property fetched only a tithe of its real value; 
but the chief counts against the law were its cruelty and injustice. 
The Legislature did not make sufficient provision for the impov¬ 
erished dependents of the Tories, while the enactment was so badly 
drawn that many loyal citizens suffered along with the disloyal, and 
soon the Legislature had to halt its execution. 17 

At this juncture new and weightier problems fell upon the in¬ 
competent Legislature. A British fleet and army arrived before 
Savannah, Georgia, just before Christmas in 1778; in six days they 
captured the town; and in two weeks they had almost cleared 
Georgia of patriot forces. The news no sooner percolated to the 
back settlements of North Carolina than the Highlanders and other 
Tories assumed a threatening attitude. The skies had blackened 
with startling suddenness. During the early days of 1779 the Legis¬ 
lature of 1778 was hastily convened in a third session, and made a 
few preparations for defense. But it could do little, and would the 
new Legislature in the spring be more efficient? 

At any rate, Governor Caswell could do nothing but wait for it to 
act. Harnett wrote him from Philadelphia upon the urgency of 
filling up the Continental battalions if North Carolina were not to 
remain a laggard. Reproach from this quarter was too much. “My 
good friend Mr. Harnett knows,” Caswell retorted, “that by the Con¬ 
stitution of this State, nothing can be done by the Executive Power 
of itself, towards this most desirable purpose, and that [as] the 
General Assembly is not to meet until the month of April, of course 
ways and means must be fallen upon to accomplish what he hopes, 
in time to render that service to the common cause, he and I both 
wish, and I think that if there is any blame to be fixed on those who 
formed the Constitution a very considerable part he ought to take 
to himself for cramping so much the powers of the executive.” 18 
The impotence of his office, which did not even permit him to call 
the Legislature in emergency session, was almost intolerable to Cas¬ 
well’s energetic temper. 

When the new Legislature met at Smithfield, “a rascally hole for 
such business,” 19 the perils of the situation were plain. General 
Lincoln’s forces in March suffered a defeat in Georgia, and immedi¬ 
ately the British commenced their invasion of South Carolina. When 

17 McRee, “Iredell,” I, 419 ff. 

18 State Records, XIII, 31-32. 

18 So Whitmel Hill; see his letter. State Records, XIV, 1-4. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 367 

Charleston falls, North Carolina “becomes a victim of easy conquest, 
merely for want of proper arms,” wrote Whitmel Hill, a member of 
Congress, from Smithfield; “our men are numerous and willing, but 
their means of defense most deplorable.” The Legislature had hardly 
convened when an alarm came from a new quarter—the British had 
landed at Portsmouth, Virginia, throwing Edenton into a panic. The 
militia were called out, and Hill went to see them. My private 
sentiments were despair, from the miserable appearance of their 
arms,” he lamented. When General Lincoln saw the ragged, weapon¬ 
less, ill-trained levies that crossed the border from North Carolina 
to his aid, he sent an angry expostulation. They are “very naked, 
he wrote Governor Caswell. “It is painful to see them in the ragged 
condition in which they appear.” If the troops were not better 
armed, he pointed out, they would be of little service in battle; if 
not better clothed, they would fall sick when the hot season came 
on. 20 

Wherein previous Legislatures had been remiss was shown by 
William Bryan, a State brigadier, in a letter of April 27, 1779, in 
which he disgustedly resigned. 21 He minced no words. First, the 
militia establishment was weak, “as there is no law, sufficiently 
penal, to compel men when drafted to turn out and march, whereby 
seldom more than half the number ordered enters upon duty.” 
Second, these half-filled companies totally lacked essential arms and 
other equipment; “nor is it possible the necessary supplies can be 
obtained when there is no Quartermaster-General or commander of 
military stores appointed to supply the militia with the numberless 
articles which come under those two departments.” He complained 
that the field officers, whom the Legislature appointed, were in large 
part inexperienced or otherwise incompetent. In short, the State’s 
troops “have but a faint resemblance to a military force.” 

Against its sea of difficulties the new Legislature did take some 
measures. It passed an act in May for raising 2000 regular troops 
before midsummer, if necessary by militia drafts, and it authorized 
Governor Caswell to send 2000 militia into Georgia or South Caro¬ 
lina for three months. No less than ^500,000 in paper was voted, 
again without provision for its gradual redemption. In the fall Cas¬ 
well was empowered to send 3000 militia southward. 22 The State 

20 State Records, XIV, 61-62. 

21 Idem. 

22 State Records, XXIV, 254-62. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


368 

had reason to be thankful that the war dragged on so slowly that 
there was time not only for these measures but for others to follow 
them. In December, 1779, Governor Caswell’s term expired, and 
the Constitution made his immediate reelection impossible—made it 
necessary to change horses in the middle of the stream. In his stead 
Abner Nash was - chosen. If Caswell had done little to invigorate 
the State government, Nash was able to do even less, for he did not 
enjoy Caswell’s popular strength. Thus the crucial new year began, 
with the capture of Charleston only four months distant. North 
Carolina faced a gloomy outlook. 

II. South Carolina Politics to 1780 

Meanwhile, the government of South Carolina had proved itself 
much more efficient, for the reasons which often make an aristocracy 
more efficient than a democracy. South Carolinians also had an 
advantage in that their permanent government was organized early 
in 1776, many months before North Carolina’s, and harmony 
was more easily attainable because the population was smaller and 
more homogeneous. But South Carolina’s chief favoring circum¬ 
stance was that her Constitution did not break sharply with the past, 
and made few innovations. Before the Revolution the government, 
so far as it was American, was in the hands of the planter-merchant 
aristocracy, and after the Revolution, it was in the same well- 
educated, well-practiced hands. 

The sharp cleavage between the planters of the low country and 
the small farmers of the upper country was, as elsewhere, in the 
South, the result of geographical conditions. For about eighty miles 
from the sea the State is level, then comes a belt of sandy hills, and 
finally the traveler reaches an upland region of hillocks and plains, 
of grain, forests, and large herds. In the uplands in 1775 few negroes 
were employed, and even in the middle belt the farmers worked hard 
over their own indigo, tobacco, and grain. The bracing upland air 
as well as the Northern form of agriculture encouraged white labor. 
But for fully forty miles from the sea the cultivators were nearly all 
blacks laboring under the direction of overseers. Rice flourished in 
the river swamps fed by tidewater, and in inland swamps furnished 
with artificial reservoirs. Cotton and indigo grew best upon the 
coastal islands, but were profitably cultivated on the mainland also. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 369 


No white man on the lower coastal plain, or for a distance of perhaps 
a hundred miles up the main rivers, thought of settling a farm and 
improving it without a body of slaves. The income of the planters 
was sometimes prodigious. Just before the war Joseph Alston ad¬ 
mitted a revenue of £5000 to £6000 a year sterling from his five 
plantations, and was reputed to receive much more, though he had 
begun life with but a half-dozen negroes. 23 The head of the Lowndes 
family had an income of £4000 a year. 24 

For spending much time in Charleston, a city of 12,000 whites and 
blacks, the planters had various reasons. Many had important 
commercial interests, for Charleston was the only great commercial 
city of the South, with so brisk a trade that 350 sail in the harbor 
were no unusual sight. The town was flat and low on the tongue of 
land at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, its water- 
supply was brackish, and the streets were too narrow for health, 
convenience, or safety from fire; but being well-drained, and cooled 
in summer by the sea-breezes, it was regarded as the most healthful 
residence short of the high hills, and was sought from even the West 
Indies. It offered a wide variety of amusements: a St. Cecilia’s 
Society to give musical entertainments; bustling coffee-houses; horse¬ 
racing; a Monday-night Club; a dancing assembly, with bad music 
but good dancing and refreshments; and gaming. It had archi¬ 
tectural attractions, for the State House was much admired, there 
were a number of fine churches, and some of the houses were im¬ 
posing brick mansions, with tiled roofs. Miles Brewton’s home, for 
example, was said to have cost £8000 sterling, and visitors marveled 
at his blue satin curtains, gilt wallpaper, elegant mirrors, heavy 
plate and fine wines. The proceedings of the Legislature were con¬ 
ducted with a dignity that befitted the aristocratic temper of the 
Province. The costly mace was laid before the Speaker, who sat in 
black robes and a wig, and the members kept their hats on, in imi¬ 
tation of Parliament. Of course Charleston was by no means exclu¬ 
sively peopled with planters, shippers, merchants, and professional 
men. But the small tradesmen, mechanics, and white laborers were, 
said a keen Yankee observer, quite different from the “middling 
order” of Boston—they were “odious characters.” 

If North Carolina’s radicalism was evinced in her neglect of 


23 Journal Josiah 

24 See McCrady, 
“Laurens,” Ch. 2. 


uincy, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, June, 1916, p. 453. 
South Carolina Under the Royal Govt.,” passim ; Wallace 


370 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Johnston and Hooper, South Carolina’s conservatism was written 
large in her choice of Rutledge and Laurens as her first President 
and Vice-President respectively. Gadsden might rally the “Liberty 
boys,” the hot-spirited clerks and mechanics, but the wealthy, cau¬ 
tious, and one-time Anglophile men of weight easily overbore them. 

Both men were of the second generation of respected Provincial 
families. Educated in England, John Rutledge evinced his ambition 
by a close attention upon Parliamentary debates, and by otherwise 
diligently training himself for the bar and the Legislature. As a 
young lawyer he zealously opposed the Stamp Act, and he was 
among the most energetic Whig leaders just before the Revolution; 
but in the Continental Congress he showed himself distinctly a 
representative of the business-minded lowland planters—it was on 
his motion that rice was exempted from the non-importation agree¬ 
ment. “A rapid speaker,” John Adams noted of him. He was chair¬ 
man of the committee which made the first draft of the State’s first 
Constitution; he and Charles Pinckney had for a decade been re¬ 
garded as the two foremost lawyers of the Colony; and everyone had 
expected his choice as first President. Vice-President Henry Laurens 
was a member of a rich Huguenot family. His father had estab¬ 
lished himself as one of the principal merchants of Charleston, and 
Henry, the eldest son, increased by his commission and importing 
business the fortune he had inherited. Buying large tracts of land, 
he became a planter also; indeed, he protested against his election 
upon the ground that at the moment he could not spare more time 
for public affairs from his many private concerns. But he had been 
in the Commons House almost uninterruptedly since 1757, and was 
not to be spared by his State till after peace came. He was less of 
a conservative than Rutledge, but still a conservative. 25 

When these men were elected, independence was more than three 
months away, and a large group in public life clung to the hope that 
the partition of the Empire could yet be averted. But after the first 
spring fighting in the Province, the views of the majority changed 
sharply. There soon began a thoroughly sound movement for dis¬ 
placing the temporary Constitution of March, 1776, by one which 
would recognize the independence of the State as permanent, give it 
a Governor instead of a President, and effect some of the social re- 

25 Wallace’s “Laurens,” passim; Letters of John Rutledge, 5". C. Hist, and 
Genealogical Mag., 1917. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 371 

forms which Jefferson was carrying through in Virginia. The radicals 
under W. H. Drayton and Gadsden furnished its driving power, but 
they steadily won men from the moderate ranks. 

Gadsden by now was a veteran political warrior, fifty-four years 
old. By birth and environment he was a patrician—the son of an 
officer in the royal navy, the possessor of a good education gained 
in England, a successful merchant as well as planter, and a man whom 
the royal Governors had thought it worth while to befriend. 26 
Lyttleton had been glad to take him as a fellow officer on an expedi¬ 
tion against the Cherokees. He had many traits of inborn leader¬ 
ship, but his temperament was thoroughly democratic, and he was in 
his element when he was leading the violent shouters for change. 
In the Legislature and Continental Congress he spoke frequently 
and impetuously, with a hot, incorrect rush of language. Drayton, 
a gifted young lawyer, had lost none of the courage with which in 
1 775 ? when Gadsden was in Philadelphia, he had led the progressives 
to victory. The demand for a new Constitution slowly became over¬ 
whelming. Early in 1778 the Legislature seized a favorable moment 
for meeting it, and presented a new framework of government, in 
the form of a legislative enactment, to President Rutledge for his 
signature. This was done with unexpected suddenness. Rutledge 
had watched the measure without much concern, for, he says, “1 
really never imagined that this bill would have reached me.” 

It was to the consternation of many conservatives that President 
Rutledge vetoed the new Constitution and then resigned. He did 
not believe that a Legislature had any lawful power to write such a 
fundamental law, and Locke, Bolingbroke, and other authorities 
supported his opinion. He took a paternal pride in the original Con¬ 
stitution; to him it represented the happy day when hope of recon¬ 
ciliation with England was still tenable, and he perhaps disliked the 
grant of religious equality to all Protestants. Vice-President Laurens, 
at this time in the Continental Congress, condemned his act. It 
seemed to many alarmed planters that it gave Gadsden and Drayton 
an opportunity to put them in the wrong, and score a decided victory, 
but the moderates and conservatives were able to keep their hands 
on the tiller. They accepted Rutledge’s resignation, voting him their 
thanks for his vigilant and faithful discharge of duty, and then 
they elected a successor to suit themselves, overriding the effort of 

M Colls. “So. Ca. Hist. Soc,” IV (1887), F. A. Porcher on Gadsden. 


372 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the radicals to choose Gadsden as Governor—Arthur Middleton re¬ 
fused the place, and they gave it to Rawlins Lowndes. 27 Sprung 
from a West Indian family, Lowndes had been distinguished in 
judicial and legislative capacities for years. In 1786 he had moved 
to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act by erecting a statue of 
Pitt in the State House, and though a consistent Whig, he was almost 
as cautious as Rutledge himself, so that the extremists had dubbed 
him “the great procrastinator.” 

Had the conservatives consulted simple preference, they would 
have chosen some such man as Charles Pinckney for Lieutenant- 
Governor. Although fully identified with their party—only the 
previous year he had opposed the disestablishment of the Anglican 
Church—he had moved forward, like Laurens and Lowndes, to sup¬ 
port the new Constitution. But they consulted political expediency; 
Gadsden’s troublesomeness suggested that he should be honored— 
and shelved—by being given the place. This adroit trick they had 
played before, when they had tried to silence Drayton first by 
placing him in the chair at the Second Provincial Congress, and 
later by appointing him to the dignified but supposedly innocuous 
post of Chief Justice. Gadsden’s indignation at being thus “got out 
of the way” was intense. From being an independent leader he 
was dragged into the entourage of a slow-moving Governor; more¬ 
over, the next Legislature would choose a full-term Governor, and 
he charged that his enemies had plotted to make him ineligible. 

Yet Gadsden loyally supported Lowndes, and such support was 
needed. The more irresponsible radicals in Charleston were hard 
to control. Partly under pressure from them, partly in thoughtless¬ 
ness, the Legislature on March 28, 1778, passed a drastic act obliging 
every free male inhabitant of mature years, under severe penalties, 
to give assurance of fidelity to the State. It was so sweeping that 
it could not possibly be enforced. When the time approached to 
punish those who had failed to obey it, Governor Lowndes was sick, 
and seeing the hopelessness of his predicament, wrote to Gadsden 
imploring assistance; whereupon the old warrior-politician hurried 
to Charleston, and on June 5, with the Council, issued a proclamation 
extending the time allowed by the act. But the “mob,” as Gadsden 
frankly called his old followers, was excited and angry. The procla¬ 
mation was hardly in the sheriff’s hands, wrote Gadsden to a friend, 

27 McCrady, “S. Ca. in the Rev., 1775-1780,” Ch. XI; Wallace’s “Laurens,” 223. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 373 

“before some myrmidons alarmed the town, we were setting up a 
proclamation against law going to ruin their Liberties and what 
not!” A deputation called upon Lowndes and Gadsden, hot words 
were exchanged, and Gadsden almost came to blows with its spokes¬ 
man. He saw more clearly than ever before where the unchecked 
impulses of the ignorant extremists would lead the State, and 
wrote: 28 

“I am afraid we have too many amongst us (who) want again to be running upon 
every Fancy to the meetings of (the) liberty tree. Query whether there is not a 
danger amongst us far more dangerous than anything that can arise from the whole 
herd of contemptible, exportable Tories.” 

The first election of a Legislature under the second Constitution 
(November 30, 1778) showed how firm was the grip of the moderates 
upon the State. The long list of conservatives sent to the State 
House included four Pinckneys, three Rutledges, two Middletons, 
and two Laurenses. No new spirit had been infused into politics by 
the extension of the franchise and the transfer of the choice of the 
upper house to the people. The ruling families of the lowlands re¬ 
tained their supremacy. The most important of the members-elect 
was John Rutledge. His popularity had been diminished hardly a 
whit by his opposition to the Constitution, and public opinion 
designated him as the new Governor—a designation which the Legis¬ 
lature ratified as soon as it met in January, 1778. Thomas Bee, after 
some delay, became Lieutenant-Governor—another conservative. 

Rutledge’s election came almost at the same time that news of the 
capture of Savannah reached Charleston, serving notice that critical 
days lay immediately ahead. Shrewd men like Henry Laurens had 
seen from the beginning of the war that the British would try to cut 
off Georgia and the Carolinas. An attempt to capture Charleston 
was now a certainty. The Legislature that elected Rutledge assigned 
him and his Council power, before it adjourned, to “do everything 
that appeared to him and to them necessary for the public good.” 
Indeed, the crisis arrived before it was expected. General Prevost, 
after taking Savannah, defeated General Lincoln at Briar Creek, 
Georgia, and then outmaneuvered him. By a forced march he sud¬ 
denly appeared before Charleston early in May, 1779, and took 
post on the Neck which linked the city with the mainland. As 
Charleston was well fortified, with artillery mounted on the ramparts 

28 McCrady’s “S. Ca. in the Rev., 1775*1780,” 271. 


374 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


and armed galleys plying in the rivers, a direct assault by the 
British would have been insane. Resorting to negotiation, Prevost 
sent an ultimatum to Governor Rutledge and the Council on May 
12. The general nature of the response is known, but not its exact 
form. One reliable authority, Major-General William Moultrie, 
says that Governor Rutledge and his Council sent out a note. 29 

“To propose a neutrality during the war between Great Britain and America, and 
the question whether the State shall belong to Great Britain or remain one of the 
United States to be determined by the treaty of peace between those two Powers.” 

But John Laurens, who was as well acquainted with the facts, de¬ 
clares that the proposal to Prevost regarding the city was: 30 

“That he should be permitted to take possession of it provided the State and harbor 
should be considered as neutral during the war, the question whether it belonged to 
Great Britain or the United States to be waived until the conclusion of it, and that 
whenever that should happen, whatever was granted to the other States, that [South 
Carolina] should enjoy.” 

In other words, in offering to make South Carolina neutral, did 
Governor Rutledge regard her as eventually a passive pawn in the 
peace negotiations, or did he stipulate that when the war ended she 
should stand on the same footing as her sister States? Laurens’ 
version is the more probable, for Rutledge never lacked courage. 
Whatever the proposal, Prevost would not accept it. While he nego¬ 
tiated, he heard that Lincoln was on his heels, and retired during 
the night so unexpectedly that Charleston could hardly realize its 
safety. 

But the second attack met with complete success. The Assembly 
was in session when on March 29, 1780, the British crossed the 
Ashley and landed on Charleston Neck, beleaguering the city by 
land and sea. Most of the legislators fled at once. Before doing 
so, however, they again conferred such extensive authority upon 
Governor Rutledge that for decades he was spoken of as “the Dic¬ 
tator.” They granted him and the Council, till ten days after the 
next session, “a power to do everything necessary for the public 
good except the taking away the life of a citizen without a legal trial.” 
The legislators fortunately saw that it might be weary months before 
they met again, though they did not suspect that it would be weary 
years, during which Rutledge almost single-handed would have to 
maintain a semblance of effective government. 

99 “Memoirs,” I, 433. 

*° McCrady, “S. Ca. in the Rev., 1775-1780,” 367, 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 37 5 

Rutledge at once issued a proclamation calling the militia and all 
the able-bodied men of Charleston to arms. The progress of the 
British siege was inexorable. Their ships immediately came over 
the bar before the outer harbor, and up to the city. It was on 
April 9 that Admiral Arbuthnot ran past Fort Moultrie and on 
April 12 Governor Rutledge and three Councilors seized the last 
opportunity, so tight was the cordon being drawn, of escaping from 
Charleston. Lieutenant-Governor Gadsden, for the old radical had 
succeeded Bee, with five of the Councilors, remained to encourage 
the defenders. It would have been wise for General Lincoln to have 
withdrawn the army from the city at the same time. His engineers 
advised against staying; so did the other officers, except Pinckney 
and Moultrie; and Washington, too distant to advise, thought that 
it was folly to remain. One factor in Lincoln’s decision was the 
demand of Gadsden and the Councilors that the city be held to the 
last but Gadsden had no authority which the general was bound to 
obey. The British lines and parallels gradually grew closer till on 
May 12 Charleston was surrendered without much hard fighting. 

Sir Henry Clinton jubilantly wrote three weeks later (June 4, 
1780) from his headquarters in Charleston to Lord George Germain 
that all resistance below the North Carolina line was ended. “I 
may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who 
are not either our prisoners or in arms with us,” he said. British rule 
had in truth been almost completely reestablished. Among the mili¬ 
tary prisoners were General William Moultrie, Colonel C. C. Pinck¬ 
ney, and Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens, the son of the former 
Vice-President. As for the civil prisoners, they included Lieutenant- 
Governor Gadsden, Dr. Ramsay, and three signers of the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr. and 
Arthur Middleton. The British boasted much because Arthur 
Middleton, together with the aged patriot Gabriel Manigault, applied 
for British citizenship. Charles Pinckney and Daniel Huger, mem¬ 
bers of the Governor’s Council who had left town with Rutledge, 
came in to camp and offered their paroles. Rawlins Lowndes and 
Henry Middleton retired to their plantations in frank acceptance of 
defeat. 31 A large number of the irreconcilables were sent to St. 
Augustine, and others were confined near at hand. But a surprising 
number of lowland citizens did not prove irreconcilable, as was 

11 McCrady, “S. Ca. in the Rev., 1775-1780,” 533 ff- 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


376 

shown when before the middle of September, 1780, 168 petitioned 
for British protection, and before the middle of July, 1781, another 
213 had done so. Addresses of congratulation were presented to the 
British commanders after the capture of Charleston and the battle 
of Camden, and no less than 210 South Carolinians signed them. 
The disheartened Rutledge wrote from Charlotte, N. C., as the year 
1780 ended, that the spirit of resistance had been almost stamped 
out. “The unfortunate affair near Camden, the want of any support 
ever since, and the little prospect of any, have affected the conduct 
of many, who were well-disposed, and whose hearts may, perhaps, 
still be with us.” 32 

Had the British acted a politic part, they might have quenched 
the last embers of the rebellion in South Carolina. By bringing 
back William Bull and making him Governor, by giving the civil 
authorities full powers, by accepting the neutrality of men who 
would not fight for the King, they might have won the people. In¬ 
stead, their sternness and cruelty left many no choice but to take up 
arms. In the discouraged letter just noted, Rutledge described this 
mistaken British policy. They had hanged many opponents, espe¬ 
cially men charged with violating paroles, they had “burnt a pro¬ 
digious number of houses, and turned a vast many women, formerly 
of affluent, or, easy, fortunes, with their children, almost naked, into 
the woods”; in short they seemed determined “to break every man’s 
spirit, or, if they can’t, to ruin him.” But the spirit of South Caro¬ 
linians was not to be broken. With surprising rapidity an effective 
partisan resistance was begun. 

The fall of Charleston left the South Carolina militia so depressed 
that Rutledge despaired of their use. They would not serve at a 
distance from home, for they were apprehensive that the Tories 
would destroy their property and kill their families. Their embodi¬ 
ment in large units being impossible, the British pushed rapid 
columns into the upper country, and took strategic positions there. 
The patriots were nonplussed, till in July a smart victory by one 
of Sumter’s detachments pointed the way to successful operations, 
and that month he was made a brigadier of State troops. On August 
6 he defeated another mixed body, five hundred strong, at Hanging 
Rock, but a fortnight later was himself almost annihilated at Fishing- 
Creek by Tarleton. Francis Marion organized a troop of less than 


““Letters,” S. Ca. Hist, and Gen. Mag., January, 19 x 7 . 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 377 


eighty men and did so much with it that Rutledge made him also a 
brigadier-general of militia. Andrew Pickens observed his parole 
faithfully until the British broke their pledges by plundering his 
plantation, when he entered the field; and after Cowpens he became 
the third brigadier. The aroused patriots gathered in small bands, 
often taking most of their arms and ammunition from the dead or 
from prisoners; and they waged an harassing warfare of sunrise 
attacks, ambuscades, and assaults upon isolated posts. 

It was under these circumstances that during 1780 the leadership 
of the State decisively changed. Except for Rutledge and a few 
others, the old patrician patriots who had marched in procession in 
honor of Wilkes and had dominated the Provincial Congresses were 
dead, imprisoned, paroled, or otherwise out of active affairs. A new 
set of chieftains was arising, as patriotic as the old, but of a different 
training and spirit, and manifesting no such conservatism. The 
ruthlessness of the British and the outrages of the Tories helped 
these men to break totally with the past. Sumter had been born in 
the upper country of Virginia and after his removal to South Caro¬ 
lina still belonged to the uplands. Pickens had been born in Penn¬ 
sylvania, and had settled at the Waxhaws, also in the new back coun¬ 
try. Marion sprang of a Huguenot family on the South Carolina 
coast, but he was not a Charlestonian, and he removed well into the 
interior, to Eutaw Springs. New men, as Isaac Motte and Francis 
Kinloch, appeared as delegates to the Continental Congress. 

Thus the struggle was carried on until at the beginning of 1781 
it assumed a much more hopeful look. Nathanael Greene took com¬ 
mand of the Southern forces late in 1780, and most of his brilliant 
successes were won on South Carolina soil. When Cornwallis 
marched from North Carolina into Virginia, he showed his general¬ 
ship by turning at once to reconquer South Carolina. By the end of 
June, 1781, he had forced the British back to the coastal country, 
where they were prodded and stung by his cavalry captains, “Light- 
horse Harry” Lee and William Washington, and by Sumter, Pickens, 
and Marion. The battle of Eutaw Springs, in September, was inde¬ 
cisive, but the British lost so heavily that they retired into Charles¬ 
ton, and thenceforth they were kept penned there by Greene. Gov¬ 
ernor Rutledge saw to it that South Carolina’s troops cooperated 
closely with Greene, and in the fall prepared to reorganize the gov¬ 
ernment with a capital outside Charleston. 


37» 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


III. North Carolina Politics 1780-1787 

Meanwhile, in the months that followed the capture of Charleston, 
North Carolina and her weak government had been tested as by 
fire. Intelligent men knew what the capture foreboded. Ten days 
after it occurred Iredell, travelling from town to town to attend the 
courts—he had been chosen Attorney-General by the Legislature in 
1 779—found people “everywhere flying from home,” and Wilming¬ 
ton crowded with refugees. The State’s Continental battalions, with 
a thousand militia, had been surrendered at Charleston, and it was 
difficult to raise and outfit new troops. Her work in supplying the 
Southern armies with provisions had already begun to impoverish 
the people, and the depreciation of the currency and deadened trade 
made recuperation difficult. Worst of all, few States contained so 
great a proportion of Tories as North Carolina, and they were eager 
to rise—too eager for Cornwallis, who wanted them to wait until 
the ripe crops would afford them sustenance. Bands sprang up as 
by magic in some sections, ravaging the farms of the patriots, while 
news came of the restiveness of many of the oldtime Regulators. 

North Carolina’s Legislature was sitting at New Bern when the 
siege of Charleston was closing, and could face the emergency. Sev¬ 
eral conservatives were there, notably Hooper and Maclaine—John¬ 
ston was sent to the Continental Congress this year—and they gave 
the session what wisdom it possessed. This was little in the opinion 
of Iredell, who wrote that the laws “are certainly the vilest collection 
of trash ever formed by a legislative body.” Governor Nash was 
authorized to send 8000 troops to South Carolina, Congress having 
urgently demanded such a force; he would have liked to command it 
himself, but it had been arranged that ex-Governor Caswell should 
lead it. A law was passed for recruiting 3000 men for three years’ 
service in the Continental line, each volunteer being granted $300 
down and the promise of a rich western tract, while even the recruit¬ 
ing officers were allowed $250 for every man they found. For a 
thousand uses money was needed, and most of it came from the 
printers. Not only was an additional £1,240,000 in paper arranged 
for, but the Governor was authorized to emit more if an emergency 
occurred during the legislative recess, though officials were already 
distributing bills in a way that made them contemptible. 33 

88 State Records, XXIV, 317-39. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 379 

One large body of the 8000 militia ordered out was collected in the 
eastern part of the State under Caswell, another in the western under 
Gen. Rutherford. Caswell united them early in August in upper 
South Carolina, and made them a part of Gates's army, the backbone 
of which had newly arrived from the North. As such, units belong¬ 
ing to them shared in the heavy defeat at Camden on August 15, 
1780, when Gates lost nearly 2000 men, and was able to rally his 
militia only at Hillsborough, 180 miles away. Another staggering 
British blow, already alluded to, was delivered a few days later 
against Sumter at Fishing-Creek. For the moment North Carolina 
believed that the war was lost, and some Britons that it was won; 
but Caswell rallied several regiments which had been in the rear at 
Camden, and called the militia of three counties to meet them at 
Charlotte—being confident, he wrote Governor Nash, of a for¬ 
midable camp in a few days. 

The panicky Assembly, convening September 5, undertook sev¬ 
eral more foolish measures, the chief being one designed to thrust 
the Governor out of all contact with the war. 34 This action in part 
reflected the dislike which many radicals had for Nash’s record as a 
moderate. Their procedure was to create a Board of War “for the 
more effectually and expeditiously calling forth the powers and re¬ 
sources of the State and disposing the same in such manner as to 
enable the generals and commanders ... to act with vigor and 
precision”; a Board which took general charge of military affairs, 
being empowered to concert a plan of campaign with the ranking 
officer of the State, while the Governor twiddled his thumbs. As 
Davie, one of the most capable Southern commanders, said they 
were “Martin, a warrior of great fame; Penn, fit only to amuse 
children; and O. Davis, who knew nothing but the game of whist.” 35 
If only because it possessed the contempt of field officers, the Board 
was incompetent to direct the State’s part in the war. Nash justly 
felt aggrieved at being pushed to one side under those circumstances 
which in other States led to the endowment of the Governor with 
unusual powers. Another statute called for the collection of specific 
provisions from each property owner; Samuel Johnston called it the 
most oppressive and least productive tax ever known in North 
Carolina. 36 A new act for receiving loans was passed, its preamble 

!* JUte R ^i?£fe 1I ?. X 2 i* a iso S F. M. Hubbard, “Life of Davie,” S 3 fL 
prompt. 6 “Though imenderto^eUeve ^he'count^^rtm a* more oppSve ^rVof 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


380 

admitting that the issue of more paper money “would have a tendency 
to increase the price of necessaries, and be greatly injurious to the 
public.” 

Fortunately, North Carolina had better soldiers than lawmakers. 
The far-reaching victory of King’s Mountain in October, 1780, not 
only freed the upper country of North Carolina from the threat of 
the Tory force raised there but halted the British invasion of the 
State, Cornwallis retreating hastily to the South Carolina frontier. 
Most important of all, the battle checked the well-laid schemes of 
Cornwallis and the Tory leaders for a general uprising. The loyal¬ 
ists whom early in the summer the British had found difficult to 
restrain now could not be persuaded to move. “This Province is 
most exceedingly disaffected,” Cornwallis wrote a fellow-officer. 
Greene’s arrival diffused a new courage throughout the Carolinas. 
Finally, in January, 1781, occurred the American victory over Tarle- 
ton at the Cowpens, in western North Carolina, which in the words 
of Cornwallis’s biographer was the most serious British defeat since 
Saratoga. 

Yet when the Legislature met the day after Cowpens for its third 
session, it faced a situation very grave still. Cornwallis could renew 
his invasion at any time, and before the end of February had 
actually marched to Hillsborough, and invited all “loyal subjects 
to repair, without loss of time, with their arms and ten days’ provi¬ 
sions, to the Royal Standard.” The first task of the Legislature was 
to abolish the Board of War. Greene disliked this body, and the 
soldiers and people had a low opinion of it. As for Governor Nash, 
he charged the Legislature with having changed “our form of gov¬ 
ernment; for by your acts you have effectually transferred the 
powers vested by the Constitution in the Governor into the hands 
of commissioners.” He was not conscious, on the strictest self-ex¬ 
amination, of having done anything except with a view to the 
State’s good. When he entered office, he had been solemnly pre¬ 
sented with the Constitution and the sword, and yet within four 
months the one had been violated, the other handed over to the 
Board of War. “In short, gentlemen,” concluded Nash, “I hold at 

exaction, this tax seems to have been paid with great reluctance. Much time 
was consumed in collecting it, especially in the thinly settled districts; and great 
difficulty was experienced in transporting the heavy articles, and driving the live¬ 
stock to the points, which were constantly changing as new movements of the 
troops were contemplated, where they would be needed. . . . The commissioners 

of the counties were under an imperfect responsibility. . . .” Hubbard’s “Davie.” 
64-70. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 381 


present but an empty title, neither serviceable to the people nor 
honorable to myself”; and he threatened to resign the Governorship 
forthwith. 37 

The Legislature yielded to this ultimatum, and abolished the 
Board. It substituted a Council Extraordinary for it, which exer¬ 
cised some of its powers and was to advise with the Governor “in 
all cases whatsoever”; but this Council was to exist only till the 
next meeting of the Legislature, and was not so irritating. The 
energetic William Davie, now Quartermaster-General, was allotted 
a greater authority by the two houses, and the impressment of sup¬ 
plies was made less unjust in nature. 38 Bills were passed for 
strengthening the militia, and reorganizing the Continental battalions. 
Then the Legislature adjourned, having elected Ex-Governor Caswell, 
Alexander Martin, and one Bignal as members of the Council Ex¬ 
traordinary. Its exertions had again fallen short of pleasing the con¬ 
servatives. Hooper, who was driven from his home in February 
by the advance of Cornwallis, wrote Iredell his testy impression of 
affairs: 39 

A country on the verge of ruin; a corrupt, or what is worse, an idiot Assembly; 
an indolent Executive; a treasury without money; a military without exertion; punc¬ 
tilios superseding duty—in a word, upon the true test of patriotism, the approach of 
the enemy, the vociferation of persecution and confiscation being resolved into silence 
or ineffectual efforts in order to promote doubts and disputation, show what we have 
to expect from the opposition in this State. 


Despite military perils, the Legislature for 1781 was duly elected 
and met in June in Wake County, a corner of the well-settled por¬ 
tion of the State still safe from British surprise. It was high time, 
for the Council Extraordinary had taken extraordinary steps. In 
March it and Governor Nash had issued an order requiring every 
inhabitant to give up one-fifth of his provisions for the army—an 
order obviously impracticable. Another order, equally fatuous, 
required every man who had abandoned his post in the recent battle 
of Guilford Court House, where Cornwallis had defeated Greene, 
to enrol in the Continental army for a year. The State was rank¬ 
ling under the disgrace inflicted upon it by the raw, ill-armed militia, 
who on that close field had fled precipitately; but the placing of 
cowards in the Continental Line was not calculated to strengthen the 


* 8 Davie Called impressment 9 legal robbery, and in December, 1781, he wrote Gen. 
Ireene: “The specific levies of government are quite inadequate. Hubbards 

Davie,” 69, 70. 

89 McRee’s “Iredell.” I, 486-88. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


382 

latter. The Legislature voted a variety of military and fiscal mea¬ 
sures, but its most important act was the election of Dr. Thomas 
Burke, an honest, hot-headed Irish physician and lawyer, to be 
Governor. 

Nash might have been reelected, but declined to serve any longer 
now that “the executive power had been so divided that it was im¬ 
possible to govern with any advantage to the people.” Burke was 
wise enough to take office only on condition that this division of 
authority cease. The Legislature let the Council Extraordinary 
die, but provided that the Governor must share the supreme military 
command with the Council of State (the executive council). But he 
would have none of this; the office had sought him, he declared; he 
would take it as the Constitution created it, or not at all. The 
Legislature knew that Burke was a born fighter. As a member of 
the Continental Congress in 1777, he had seized a musket when 
Philadelphia was threatened, and fought at the Brandywine. He 
had never brooked a slight, and could speak and write effectively. 
Moreover, the radical legislators hardly dared quarrel with one of 
their own wing, whom they had elected in opposition to the con¬ 
servative nominee, Samuel Johnston. They yielded, and the Gov¬ 
ernor in his military capacity ignored the Council of State. 40 

The people hoped much from the new Governor, believing that 
with energy and capacity he might partly relieve them of their heavy 
taxation and the forcible levies. The governmental and economic 
life of North Carolina was at the lowest ebb. Under Nash, the 
Board of War, and the military leaders, as Nash wrote Burke, “men, 
not knowing whom to obey, obeyed nobody.” “The resources of the 
State,” Davie told Greene, 41 “whether from a blunder in our polity 
or want of address in the executive, are of no more service than if 
they were really exhausted; . . . neither our money nor our credit 
is any longer a medium.” Every farm in some sections had been 
half stripped of live stock and stored grain to furnish the armies. 
The impressments were deeply resented by merchants who thereby 
lost their little stores of cloth, ammunition, rum, coffee, and sugar. 
Burke bent hard to his problems, and a message he sent the Coun¬ 
cil on July 26, 1781, urging the strengthening of the State’s finances 
and the restoration of order, showed that he had no illusions: 42 

40 See sketch of Burke, “North Carolina Booklet,” October, 1906. 

41 Hubbard’s “Davie,” 70-71. 

43 State Records, XIX, 855 ff. 



POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 383 

The country is everywhere unprepared for defence, without arms, without dis¬ 
cipline, without arrangements; even the habits of civil order and obedience to laws 
changed into a licentious contempt of authority and a disorderly indulgence of vio¬ 
lent propensities. Industry is intermitted, agriculture much decayed, and commerce 
struggling feebly with almost insuperable difficulties. The public money is unac¬ 
counted for, the taxes uncollected or unproductive . . . and the treasury totally 
unable to make payment. 

Burke made a stand against the excesses of the forage-masters 
and impressment officers, who had committed intolerable outrages. 
He halted Governor Nash’s ruinous policy of impressing all im¬ 
ported articles upon the moment of their arrival, which had so dis¬ 
couraged trade that North Carolina had not fifty bushels of salt for 
her troops, and as little for the general public. He travelled about 
the State trying in person to restore confidence, until his activities 
were suddenly cut short. In September, he and a number of other 
State officers were unsuspectingly transacting business at the village 
capital, Hillsborough. The noted Tory leader, David Fanning, a 
young South Carolinian, swooped down upon the place, and after 
some fighting made more than 200 prisoners. Among them, Fanning 
reported, were “the Governor and his Council, a party of Conti¬ 
nental colonels, captains, subalterns and seventy-one Continental 
soldiers taken out of a church.” This was a month before Corn¬ 
wallis’s surrender. 

Governor Burke was taken to Charleston, whence, as a prisoner of 
state, not subject to exchange, he was paroled to James’s Island, in 
the harbor opposite Fort Moultrie. The British were inconsiderate 
in their treatment of him. James’s Island was a shelter for ruffians 
of the back country who were so brutal that the Charleston Tories 
would have nothing to do with them, and though Governor Burke 
repeatedly petitioned for protection, he did not receive it. “After I 
had been there some considerable time,” Burke relates, “a number 
of refugees were sent on who became immediately contentious, and 
I perceived they committed every species of offence, even murder, 
with impunity, their persons were unknown; their dress was all 
alike, that is literally dirty rags; their outrages were committed in 
strong parties, and as they always retreated in security to their 
encampment, it was impossible to detect them; they were under no 
control or discipline, and they were desperate with want, rage, and 
disappointment.” 43 Burke redoubled his importunities for a guard, 
but in vain. He knew that the North Carolina Tories especially 


u State Records, XVI. 14. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


384 

wanted his life. At length, a party of the refugees fired on a small 
group at his quarters, and killed a man standing on one side of him, 
and wounded another on his other hand; while their violence would 
have gone farther but for the interference of a British officer. Burke 
concluded that he was justified in breaking his parole, and on a 
chill January night, when the guards were under cover, he escaped. 
He wrote back to Gen. Leslie offering to return a man of equivalent 
rank, or to surrender himself again on condition that he would be 
treated like other Continental officers, but the British commander 
could not consider these proposals. Thereupon he resumed his 
duties as Governor, his term being near its end. 

When the Legislature met early in 1782, Burke refused to stand 
for reelection, probably because he knew defeat would be certain. 
He had shown energy and ability, but his absence from the State 
in the crisis of the war, and the circumstances of his return—for 
many agreed with Greene that it was dishonorable—counted against 
him. His merits were no recommendation to a Legislature which 
did not want an independent-minded Governor. Discerning men 
knew, as Hooper wrote (April 8) that careful measures had to be 
taken to save “this wretched State from its present anarchy and 
gloomy expectations.” But the Legislature could not deal properly 
with even the remaining war problems. Forces had to be kept under 
arms at the South, where Charleston was still in British hands. The 
best means of supplying them had been found to be the new State 
commissariat and quartermaster’s departments; but on the ground 
that unlawful impressments, and misapplications of public stores, 
had been committed by men masquerading as State commissaries, 
these departments were now abolished, and the clumsy system of 
county commissaries was restored. On returning home, some As¬ 
semblymen even drove off their cattle which had been collected by 
commissary officers, and urged their constituents to do the same. 44 

More disheartening was the wrong mood in which the Legislature 
approached the problems of peace. This was signally evinced by its 
election of Alexander—familiarly called “Paddy”—Martin, a noted 
radical, to be Governor, for he was a rancorous hater of the British, 
and represented a policy of repression and persecution for all Tories. 
Burke had pursued a just and moderate policy toward the loyalists. 
When others wished them hanged in scores, he had planned to dis- 

44 Hubbard’s “Davie,” 75-76. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 385 

pose of them advantageously and humanely by exchanging them as 
prisoners of war for the Americans who languished in Charleston. 
“The checking of the furious resentment that prevails among the 
people, and produces tragical effects,” he wrote Governor Mathews of 
South Carolina, “and the preventing the number of judicial con¬ 
victions for treason which involved the government in the dilemma 
of suffering numbers to be executed summa jure, or by interposing 
pardons weaken the due authority of the laws, were with me strong 
motives for adopting those measures by removing the objects.” 45 
The conservatives united upon Samuel Johnston, who would of 
course have been even a milder Governor than Burke. For some 
days they counted upon the assistance of Caswell, who was a mod¬ 
erate and a resident of the eastern part of the State, in electing 
Johnston; but Caswell dashed this expectation by suddenly throw¬ 
ing his great influence on Martin’s side. 

Besides electing Martin, the Legislature of 1782 passed a measure 
renewing the sale of confiscated property, and naming some seventy 
men or companies specifically whose possessions were forfeited. A 
vindictive clamor arose for executions. No Southern State had 
suffered more than North Carolina from the strife between Tory 
and patriot. The followers of Fanning and similar Tory leaders were 
half soldiers, half desperadoes, and even Tarleton, a gallant and effi¬ 
cient British officer, had not only committed houses to the flames 
and destroyed the food of whole countrysides, but had let murder and 
rape go unpunished. Men who had lost their all, whose sisters 
or daughters had been assaulted, who had seen a brother or son with 
his throat cut in a pool of blood, demanded vengeance. Though 
many Tories fled within the British lines, the criminal dockets were 
crowded with indictments for treason. Only the exertions of the 
soberest citizens, including Attorney-General Iredell, and the refusal 
of many soldiers of the Continental Line to see a disarmed enemy 
hurt, saved the State from a large number of executions. 

The Legislature of 1783 was not superior to its predecessor. It 
was prevailed upon to pass an act of pardon and oblivion for treason, 
misprision of treason, felony, or misdemeanor committed since July 
4, 1776. But this act excepted all who had served as officers under 
the King, all named in the confiscation acts, all who, having attached 
themselves to the British, remained outside the State more than a 

48 State Papers, XVI, 217-18. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


386 

year after the passage of the law, and any person guilty of murder, 
robbery, rape, or houseburning. The clamor of debtors caused the 
Legislature to pass a foolish measure for a suspension of suits. Suf¬ 
ficient protection would have been afforded the poor if the State had 
halted the execution of court judgments for a time. The Legis¬ 
lature reelected Governor Martin, the ambitious Caswell being the 
chief opposition candidate. Caswell hoped for the solid eastern sup¬ 
port he had denied Johnston the previous year, but the conservatives, 
nursing their grudge and led by the quick-tempered Maclaine, 
strained every nerve to defeat him. Crestfallen, Caswell wrote his 
son: “The Edenton and Halifax men with a very few exceptions 
voted for Governor Martin, saying I had crammed him down their 
throats last year and they were determined to keep him there.” 

James Hogg, a member of this Legislature, wrote Iredell in con¬ 
demnation of its qualities just as Johnston, Maclaine, Hooper, and 
Davie had written of the Assemblies in previous years: 46 

I will not venture to describe to you the temper of the Assembly—my style is too 
feeble for such a subject. I think you, and Mr. Hooper, and Mr. Johnston, would 
have been of great service in this Assembly to the country, nor am I satisfied with 
your apologies;—if such men do not stand forth in this critical period, and lend 
their aid, this country won’t be worth living in. A set of unprincipled men, who 
sacrifice everything to their popularity and private views, seem to have acquired too 
much influence in all our Assemblies. 

It was true that the best men in North Carolina were often un¬ 
willing to make the surrender of money and time involved in public 
service. In the very letter of 1782 in which he spoke of the State’s 
anarchic condition, Hooper added that he had “resolved to make 
no sacrifice of my private interests to the public concerns.” He had 
just suffered much from the British occupation of Wilmington, losing 
slaves, furniture, silver, and “above 100 valuable volumes,” one of 
his greatest joys in life; but he could have afforded attendance upon 
the Assembly. Iredell’s service as Attorney-General was too brief, 
for he resigned in 1782, and if his principal motive in stepping out 
was his distaste for the prosecution of Tories, he was affected also by 
the consideration that he could make more money at private prac¬ 
tice. Johnston stood too much on his dignity in refusing to give 
parliamentary battle to “unprincipled men.” 

When the election of the Legislature of 1784 occurred, public at¬ 
tention was centred chiefly upon the treaty of peace. The con¬ 
servatives hoped that it might be used in the Legislature to obtain 

* e McRee’s “Iredell,” II, 45-46. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 387 

justice for the loyalists. “Without it, I despair of doing anything of 
immediate consequence,” wrote Iredell. “Should it be laid before 
us, it will then be seen whether we will suffer anger and resentment 
so far to get the better of reason and sound policy, as to render us 
infamous over all Europe.” The question whether its provisions 
should be enforced elicited a surprising number of pamphleteers. 
Johnston and Iredell called a public meeting on August 1, 1783, at 
which they had a set of resolutions and one of instructions to the 
Edenton legislators voted. These two documents show clearly the 
objects sought by the conservative low-country leaders. The reso¬ 
lutions declared that the terms of peace ought to be “sacredly ful¬ 
filled”; and called for the payment of interest on the State debt, 
with 'the gradual reduction of the principal. The instructions de¬ 
manded support of the impost amendment asked by Congress, repro¬ 
bated any new issues of paper money, advocated a systematization 
of the State finances, pointed out the expediency of permanent and 
liberal salaries for judges, and asked for the encouragement of trade 
and manufacturing. The conservative leaders made an unusually 
energetic bid for office. Johnston was elected Senator for Chowan 
County by twice as many votes as his nearest competitor; Hooper 
was sent to the House for Orange County by a heavy majority, Mac¬ 
laine for Wilmington, and Allen Jones for Halifax. 47 

But it was soon evident that the Legislature would oppose a strict 
observance of the treaty. The final days of April, 1784? it devoted 
to debate. The conservatives exhausted all their arguments, but the 
resolutions they introduced were, so far as they assented to the rec¬ 
ommendations of Congress for liberal treatment of all loyalists and 
British residents, rejected in the Commons by a vote of three to one. 
“Imps of hell,” General Rutherford called the Tories, and Nash was 
almost as vehement. Furthermore, the Legislature flatly violated the 
treaty in its action upon the payment of British debts, declining to 
remove the obstacles which prevented British subjects from suing 
for the payment of obligations, and voting to sell some British debts 
that were part of the assets of confiscated estates. The petitions of 
various loyalists for the restitution of property—they included two 
of Iredell’s friends and two men whose claims had received the ex¬ 
press recommendation of Dr. Franklin—were spurned. Hooper was 
left dejected: “There is not a frenzy of misguided political zeal— 


47 McRee’s “Iredell,” II, 94 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


388 

avarice clothed in the cover of patriotism—of private passion and 
prejudice, under the pretence of revenging the wrongs of the coun¬ 
try . . . that can give me the least surprise hereafter”; and Iredell 
repented of having had anything to do with the House. 

In other respects the Legislature was delinquent in its discharge 
of Federal obligations. During the war the State paid so little 
upon the Congressional requisitions that at its close it owed the Con¬ 
tinental Treasury $18,230,000. Upon three new requisitions early 
in 1784 North Carolina paid not a cent. Moreover, after 1780 the 
State was grossly negligent in maintaining a representation in Con¬ 
gress. The Legislature would not appropriate money to pay the 
full expenses of the delegates, the journey was painful, and they 
received no public appreciation. From July 21 to September 21, 
1781, William Sharpe alone sat for North Carolina; then till early 
in October the State was unrepresented; and later Benjamin Haw¬ 
kins was the sole delegate until March 19, 1782, when he went home 
and left no one in Congress until July 19. The radical Thomas Per¬ 
son, elected in 1784, did not stir a step towards Philadelphia. 48 

Again, North Carolina—against the protest of thirty-seven legisla¬ 
tors—ceded her transmontane lands to the nation by a conditional 
act of April, 1784, a praiseworthy step. But it was self-interested. 
A national movement was at that time on foot for levying a Con¬ 
tinental land tax, and another for the apportionment of Continental 
requisitions strictly according to population, so that North Caro¬ 
linians felt that it might be prudent to detach the wide Tennessee 
country, steadily filling up with poor inhabitants. The settlers be¬ 
yond the mountains were not loved, anyway. “The offscourings of 
the earth, fugitives from justice,” one legislator described them; 
“we will be rid of them at any rate.” Yet after all, the grant was 
withdrawn that fall. 49 It is to the credit of the State that she 
early assented to the request of Congress for power to levy a five 
per cent duty on imports, and for the right to control trade with 
foreign nations; 50 but it must be remembered that North Carolina 
had good reason for doing so. A greater Congressional authority 
over commerce meant a clear gain, for North Carolina had little 
direct commerce, and so paid tribute to her two great neighbors. 

From 1784 to 1787 the Legislature refused to carry out the peace 

48 R. D. W. Connor, “N. Ca. ” I, Ch. 27. 

49 W. K. Boyd, Ch. 1; State Records XXIV, 561-63; 678-79. 

60 Thomas Person protested against the impost grant; State Records, XVII, 944; 
XXIV. 561. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 389 


treaty in its entirety. After its hostile action in the former year, 
Johnston, Hooper, and Maclaine consulted with one another upon 
their proper course as lawyers. They agreed that suits brought for 
British debts, and suits by persons who lay under disabilities during 
the war, might—in spite of the attitude of the Legislature—now be 
maintained. One judge would certainly be against them, and they 
feared all three would be so, but they wished to try. 51 As Maclaine 
apprehended, the judiciary was unfriendly. Not until the Federal 
Constitution had received its first State ratifications was the treaty 
swallowed: on December 22, 1787, the legislators formally voted 
that it was part of the law of the State. 


IV. South Carolina Politics 1780-1787 


Meanwhile, in South Carolina an even greater outburst of violence 
and passion had followed the restoration of the State to the patriots. 
It found one expression in harsh legislation against the supposed 
Tories and turncoats who had accepted the authority of the British 
when they overran the State, and another outlet in riots, tarring and 
feathering, and murder. But responsible men gradually brought it 
under control, its final phases merging with the malevolence shown 
by the unpropertied radicals for the aristocratic governing body of 
planters. From these disturbances the State plunged into a period 
of economic troubles, matching those of the North at the time of 
Shays’s Rebellion. 

In November, 1781, the British forces having been withdrawn to 
the vicinity of Charleston, Governor Rutledge issued writs for an 
election to the Legislature to be held December 17-18. 52 He orig¬ 
inally planned to hold the session at Camden during the first week 
in January, but it actually began at Jacksonborough on the 18th. 
This was the only lowland town available—a mere hamlet of sixty 
houses, a courthouse, a jail, and large rice warehouses, on the Edisto 
35 miles from Charleston. One reason why the patriots selected it 
was that it would signalize their recovery of the State, General 
Greene remarking that it would humiliate the British to know that 


62 “Cassius” (Aedanus Burke?) in his pamphlet, Address to the Freemen of the 
State of South Carolina” (1783) condemned the mode of holding this election as 
arbitrary. “The writs of election were accompanied with printed instructions to the 
returning officers, not to admit any person to vote, but such as obeyed his extraordi¬ 
nary or&amation [of September 27, 1781]. The returning officers had also further 
orders^ from the Governor to choose particular men whom he named, and according 
to such nomination they were chosen. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


390 

the Legislature was sitting within sound of their reveille. 53 The 
best men in the State had been elected by the two houses and though 
a quorum was barely made in each, they were an embodiment of 
South Carolina’s ability and experience. Three signers of the Dec¬ 
laration of Independence, Heyward, Rutledge, and Middleton, had 
been chosen; the most important military figures, Generals Sumter, 
Marion, Pickens, Henderson, Huger, and Moultrie, and Colonels 
John Laurens and C. C. Pinckney were there; and a number of other 
distinguished men, as Gadsden, Hugh Rutledge, and the annalist, 
Dr. David Ramsay. The low country was dominant, but for the 
first time the up-country was influentially represented. Sumter, 
Pickens, and the Hamptons were among those who attended from 
above the fall line of the rivers. 

As Governor Rutledge and others expected, the session was brief. 
The laws which had rendered paper currency a legal tender for debt 
were repealed, but at the same time poor men were protected by a 
prohibition of suits for the recovery of debts until ten days after 
the next General Assembly should meet. The State’s consent was 
granted to the Continental impost. The Legislature elected a new 
Governor without factional quarrels, first tendering the place to 
Gadsden, who declined it because of his age and physical infirmities, 
and then choosing John Mathews, who had been in Congress since 
1778, and had been recalled to attend the Jacksonborough sittings. 
Mathews had distinguished himself in combating the intrigue of the 
French Ambassador, by which the Carolinas and Georgia might pos¬ 
sibly have lost their independence to procure that of the other States. 

But what made the Jacksonborough Legislature famous was its 
law of confiscation, banishment, and amercement, passed against the 
protest of some of the ablest members. South Carolina’s treatment 
of the Tories had been much milder than that of many sister States, 
but it was too much to expect a Legislature meeting in such circum¬ 
stances to be magnanimous. Rutledge in opening the session spoke 
of the propriety of action with regard to the traitorous citizens who 
had congratulated the British commanders on their victories, had 
borne arms for the King, or had otherwise “endeavored to subvert 
our Constitution”: 54 

63 Greene’s “Life of Nathanael Greene,” III, 429 ff. 

64 Ramsay, “Rev. of S. C.,” II, 234 ff.; for a view of the attitude a typical 
colonel took toward the Tory “villains that p'erpetrated this wanton, horrid murder, 
burning, and plundering,” see R. W. Gibbes, “Doc. Hist, of the Amer. Rev , 1776- 
1782,” 207-09. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 391 


The extraordinary lenity of this State has been remarkably conspicuous. Other 
States have thought it just and expedient to appropriate the property of British sub¬ 
jects to the public use, but we have forborne to take even the profits of the estates 
of our most implacable enemies. It is with you to determine, whether the forfeiture 
and appropriation of their property should now take place. If such shall be your 
determination, though many of our firmest friends have been reduced for . their 
inflexible attachment to the cause of their country, from opulence to inconceivable 
distress, yet ... it will redound to the reputation of this State, to provide a 
becoming support for the families of those whom you may deprive of their property. 


These words fell upon the ears of many men who had lost most of 
their property, of some who had been cruelly imprisoned, and of 
some whose families had suffered from Tory ruthlessness; and the 
result was legislation applying to two great bodies, each member of 
which was specified by name. The first body was in part banished, 
and the property of its members was vested in State commissioners 
who were directed to sell it at auction within five years. It in¬ 
cluded British subjects, never citizens of South Carolina; all men 
who had served with the enemy and had not obeyed a proclamation 
issued by Governor Rutledge in 1779 to surrender themselves; some 
of those who had congratulated Clinton, Cornwallis, and Admiral 
Arbuthnot; holders of British commissions; and those who had not 
only avowed allegiance to the King, but had proved themselves 
inveterate enemies of the State. The second body included men 
who had accepted British protection, and had failed to surrender 
themselves in accordance with the proclamation of Governor Rut¬ 
ledge issued just before Yorktown, 55 or who had supplied the British 
with money. They were amerced 12 per cent, upon the actual value 
of their property. 

It is worth noting the names of some of the men who were wise 


and humane enough to oppose this legislation. Gadsden attacked 
the confiscations as “an auto da fe,” while Marion is reported on 
the authority of the fabulist-historian Weems to have offered a toast 
at Governor Mathews’s table, “Damnation to the Confiscation Act!” 
Though General Greene did not wish to interfere in the State’s in¬ 
ternal affairs, he did not long conceal his opinion of the law. “Where 
is the justice or wisdom,” he asked, “in punishing these men, who 
can no longer injure us, for having always continued to think as we 
all thought ten years ago?” The preamble to the legislation made 

u “Cassius” rightly said that Rutledge’s proclamation of September 27, 1781, was the 
fountain head of all the persecution, for it assumed that all who had taken British 
protectiin had committed treason, and . forfeited their lives and property. Our 
inhabitants did nothing more than their duty in taking protection, and if they 
[hought they could secure better treatment, or # alleviate their calamity by congratu¬ 
lations, they had an undoubted right to do it. 


392 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


an unfortunate impression, setting forth as the cnief reason for 
passing it the propriety of retaliating upon the Tories for the dam¬ 
age they had done to Whig property, and making no mention of the 
urgent necessity of finding money for defensive purposes; although 
two regiments had to be raised for the Continental Line, and Marion 
wrote that the confiscations and amercements would provide a fund 
of at least a million sterling. 

Critics of the legislation not only condemned it as being ex post 
facto, but declared that the lists of men to whom it applied had 
been drawn up with gross partiality, and that the evidence on which 
the alleged Tories or turncoats were convicted might be mere gos¬ 
sip, or the fabrication of individuals who cherished a grudge. More¬ 
over, they said, allegiance and protection are reciprocal, and the 
citizen was excused from offering the first when the State ceased to 
offer the second. “Cassius,” thought to be that hot, impetuous, 
kindly Irish judge, Aedanus Burke, reminded the people at the be¬ 
ginning of 1783 that “the State soon after the reduction of Charles¬ 
ton may be strictly said to have been conquered. Not only the 
capital, but every post throughout the country was in the hands of 
the enemy. The Governor, who represented the sovereignty of the 
State, had provided for his safety by flight, and all the Continental 
troops in South Carolina were either killed, taken, or routed.” 

It was asserted that the “crimes” for which amercement was pro¬ 
vided were especially venial, since the acceptance of British protec¬ 
tion had been unavoidable for many. A number of the members of 
the Jacksonborough Legislature had asked for such protection. Gen. 
Moultrie had advised several Charleston friends to do so. When 
the tide began to turn in favor of the Americans, some men were 
able to escape to the American forces, or hire a military substitute, 
as the Governor’s proclamation just before Cornwallis’s surrender 
required, while some equally patriotic men were not. It could not 
be denied that the lists of estates to be confiscated or amerced were 
compiled either with shocking carelessness or a flagrant disregard 
for justice. “Cassius” wrote that one legislator would have suf¬ 
fered banishment and the loss of his estate had not a fellow member 
secreted the slip of paper on which his name was written. Some 
men of influence or family dignity were let off lightly or scot free. 
Colonel Thomas Pinckney, an old man tottering to his grave, was 
named in the lists. But Henry Middleton, Rawlins Lowndes, and 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 393 

Daniel Huger, who had taken comfortable refuge under the British 
flag, and stayed there, suffered no penalty. The upper country had 
swarmed with Tories, yet only ten estates were confiscated there. 

General Alexander Leslie wrote from the British headquarters 
in Charleston denouncing the confiscations, which he contrasted with 
the British policy of merely sequestrating Whig property; and he 
made a raid toward the Santee in retaliation, carrying off some 
negroes to present to injured Tories. Governor Mathews in reply 
described the British sequestrations in their true confiscatory light, 
and warned the enemy against further raids. If any occurred, he 
pointed out, the Legislature might be provoked into declaring null 
and void all the debts due to British creditors from South Caro¬ 
linians; however, in significant words he added that his ambition 
would be to execute all laws “with lenity.” Lenity indeed dis¬ 
tinctly marked the enforcement of the confiscation and amercement 
legislation. Moultrie tells us in his “Memoirs” how much it mani¬ 
fested itself the very next year, 1783: 56 

. . . for the honor of the Jacksonborough Assembly, the most of these very men 
were members at the first meeting of the General Assembly which met in Charleston 
after the evacuation. When they had got possession of the country again, and peace 
was restored, they were softened with pity, and had compassion for their fellow 
sufferers, and listened with cheerfulness to the prayer of their petitions. I had the 
honor of being appointed chairman of a large committee from the Senate, to meet a 
very large committee from the House of Representatives, to hear . . . the several 
petitions; and after sitting several weeks, and giving everyone a fair and impartial 
hearing, a report was made to the separate houses in favor of a great majority; and 
a great part of those names which were upon the confiscation, banishment, and 
amercement lists were struck off; and after a few years, on their presenting their 
petitions year by year, almost the whole of them had their estates restored to them, 
and themselves, restored as fellow citizens. 

Under the modification of the Confiscation Act allowed in 1783, 
seventy-seven banished persons were allowed to return conditionally, 
ind the sale of their estates was halted. Succeeding legislatures 
took action in similar spirit, till in 1787 even Lieutenant-Governor 
Bull was allowed to return, having petitioned that he might rest his 
iged bones in South Carolina’s soil. By these recessions from a 
vindictive measure, South Carolina in some measure redeemed her 
reputation for a generous chivalry. 

Charleston’s, the first of the two great evacuations with which 
.he Revolution closed, was not less dramatic than that of New 
tfork, and the emotion evoked was as great. The date was Decem- 
)er 14, 1782. By prearrangement General Leslie moved his troops 

60 Moultrie, “Memoirs,” II, 325-26. 


394 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


from his advanced works and barracks slowly down to Gadsden’s 
Wharf and more slowly disembarked them. General Wayne’s men 
followed at 200 yards, the British often shouting to them to halt, 
for they were too close. Some loyalists stayed in spite of their 
evident peril, but the great majority had taken a painful farewell 
of old neighbors. It required four hours for the American forces 
to advance three miles, but just an hour before noon Wayne’s men 
drew up in column before the State House. The enemy fleet, no 
less than 300 sail, lay a vast curved line and a magnificent sight as 
it moved out of the harbor. At three o’clock “Light Horse Harry” 
Lee’s cavalry rode down the guarded streets, forming an escort for 
Generals Greene and Moultrie, Governor Mathews, the Council, and 
a group of other officers and citizens. “The great joy that was felt 
on this day by the citizens and soldiers, was inexpressible,” Moultrie 
writes. “I cannot forget that happy day when we marched into 
Charleston with the American troops; it was a proud day to me, and 
I felt myself much elated, at seeing the balconies, the doors, and 
windows crowded with the patriotic fair, the aged citizens and others, 
congratulating us on our return home, saying ‘God bless you, gen¬ 
tlemen, you are welcome home, gentlemen!’ Both citizens and sol¬ 
diers shed mutual tears of joy.” 

To no other State except Georgia did evacuation mean so much, 
for no other State had been so nearly submerged by the British 
tide. Uplands and lowlands in wide sections had been laid waste— 
crops, fences, and outbuildings destroyed, furniture carried off, and 
slaves killed or driven away. A Briton named James Simpson 
wrote Sir Harry Clinton two months after the capture of Charleston 
that nothing but his own observation would have made him believe 
that one-half the distress he witnessed could have been produced so 
rapidly in so rich and flourishing a country. Many families which 
four years before had enjoyed every luxury were without food, 
clothing, or money. He instanced the losses of Rawlins Lowndes, 
whose country estate had brought him £3700 a year before the war, 
but during the struggle had not fetched £40 a year, whose houses 
were ruined, and who had lost more than 80 good slaves. Joseph 
Johnson, 57 one of the few Carolinians who has left his personal 
recollections of that dreary time, says that “the whole country was 

67 “Traditions and Reminiscences,” 387-88; for Simpson’s words, see Amer. MSS.,. 
Royal Institution of Great Britain, Vol. XIX, No. 10. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 395 

impoverished, and to an extent scarcely credible.” Taken as a 
youngster across the State in 1783, he rested with his father at a 
respectable wayside farmhouse. One of its children, gossiping with 
him, exultantly declared: “Ah, boy, I’ve got a new shirt, and it’s 
made out of daddy’s old one, and daddy’s got a new shirt made 
out of mammy’s old shift, and mammy’s got a new shift, made out 
of the old sheet.” To Moultrie we can again turn for a view of the 
country-side in 1783: 58 

I remained at Winyaw till late in September, at which time I paid a visit to 
Gen. Greene. It was the most dull, melancholy, dreary ride that anyone could pos¬ 
sibly take, of about one hundred miles through the woods of that country, which I 
had been accustomed to see abound with livestock and wild fowl of every kind, and 
was now destitute of all. It had been so completely chequered by the different 
parties, that not one part of it had been left unexplored; consequently, not the 
vestige of horses, cattle, hogs, or deer, etc., was to be found. The squirrels and 
birds of every kind were totally destroyed. The dragoons told me, that on their 
scouts, no living creature was to be seen, except now and then a few camp scavengers 
[the buzzards], picking the bones of some unfortunate fellows, who had been shot 
or cut down, and left in the woods above ground. . . . 

My plantation I found to be a desolate place; stock of every kind taken off; the 
furniture carried away, and my estate had been under sequestration. 

South Carolinians themselves were not surprised that the three or 
four years beginning with 1783 were years of turmoil. Reviewing 
the State’s history in 1789, Edward Rutledge wrote Jay that two 
causes had chiefly contributed to this. One was that people had 
grown used to military activity, and unused to any settled, peaceful 
authority. Moreover, the importance which a considerable number 
of individuals assumed for the services they had rendered during the 
war made it difficult to restrain them, for there were too many 
military and naval commanders who did not wish to fall back into 
the ranks. Rutledge here referred to such men as Commodore 
Alexander Gillon, leader for some time of the most turbulent party. 
In a notable charge to a grand jury in 1783, Aedanus Burke agreed 
that much of the violence was the war’s aftermath: our citizens, he 
said, from putting their enemies to death, have reconciled them¬ 
selves to slaying one another. The other cause of political strife 
mentioned by Rutledge was the immense debt the people owed, a 
debt they could not repudiate, and which weighed like a millstone 
about their necks, until it drove the Legislatures and the people 
into impolitic acts. 59 

The Legislature which opened in Charleston near the end of 

88 “Memoirs,” II, 354 - 56 . . „ TTT , 

os s. Ca. Gazette, June xo, 1783; Jays Works, HI, 367-68. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


396 

January, 1783, acted in many ways generously and wisely; but it 
showed a poorer spirit when it made a qualified repeal of the law 
of 1782 granting Congress the right to impose the five per cent, 
impost. The controversy over this question gave rise to a strange 
episode in General Greene’s interference. Greene, now command¬ 
ing the Southern department, had his headquarters in Charleston, 
where he was in close contact with the conservative gentlemen— 
such as the Rutledges and Pinckneys—who later espoused Federal¬ 
ism so warmly, and were at this time in favor of the impost. His 
relations with some other South Carolinians had been unhappy. He 
had shown a constant dislike of General Sumter, for example. His 
hostility to the Confiscation Act had offended the extremists. In the 
later skirmishing of the war, his subordinate, Kosciusko, had cap¬ 
tured some valuable horses in a raid. Law and army usage de¬ 
manded that they be sold at auction for the benefit of the Conti¬ 
nental Army; but some citizens identified the horses as their own, 
and—horses being invaluable in that stripped country—Governor 
Mathews supported their claim with vigor. The dispute was sub¬ 
mitted to the Continental Congress, which decided in favor of the 
State, but it left a good deal of ill-feeling. At the British evacuation, 
it was noticed that no State military officer of high rank had been 
invited to ride into the city with the victorious troops of Greene and 
Lee, although Marion was within easy call. 60 

In short, though the Legislature had voiced its warm thanks to 
Greene for his services, and had voted him a valuable and well- 
equipped estate called Boone’s Barony, south of the Edisto, many 
South Carolinians, especially of the radical upland party, disliked 
the brave Yankee Quaker. He now made a grave misstep. When 
the Legislature was on the point of repealing the impost grant, he 
sent a protest to the Governor, requesting that it be laid before the 
Legislature. He called attention to the dangers that surrounded 
the weak national government and that might affect the States. He 
was one, he said, who believed that independence could be a blessing 
only under Congressional influence, and who feared above every¬ 
thing the tendency to sacrifice national interests to local and State 
desires. In closing, he spoke of the risk of a military mutiny, and 
declared that if the war recommenced under these circumstances, 
“your ruin is inevitable.” 

60 Greene’s “Life of Greene,” III, 468 ff. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 397 

When the Governor transmitted the letter, the lower house was the 
scene of a violent outburst. “A Cromwell! A dictator!” shouted 
the more excitable members. It was plain that Greene had injured 
the cause that he meant to help. “Hampden” through the press 
denounced both Greene’s action and the impost, speaking of the 
latter in a way that showed a deep antagonism to a powerful central 
government. However, the Legislature qualified its repeal of the 
impost grant by levying a duty of five per cent under State author¬ 
ity, the proceeds to be used solely for Continental purposes. 61 

Resisting Greene’s attempted interference, the Legislature no less 
spiritedly refused to yield to the turbulent mob of Tory-baiters. The 
planters and merchants, the fine old families, still dominated the 
two houses, though a prominent part in the proceedings was taken 
by the uplanders. Soon after meeting, it had elected one of the 
patricians, Speaker Benjamin Guerard, as Governor—a dignified, 
mediocre man, who, as one of the Charlestonians confined in a ’ 
prison-ship in the harbor, and later exiled to Philadelphia, had given 
liberally of his wealth to help his fellow-unfortunates. As we have 
noted, nearly eighty banished persons were allowed by this legisla¬ 
tive session to return conditionally to the State. Governor Guerard 
was a friend to such generous measures, and publicly declared later 
that one means of making America a great nation lay in “forgiving 
and pitying our enemies.” The arguments of “Cassius” for a gen¬ 
eral amnesty made many converts among thoughtful people. Brit¬ 
ish merchants in Charleston were already being tolerated and traded 
with. In the city’s reviving social diversions many signs of con¬ 
ciliation could be observed. But all this was wormwood and gall 
to a set of men who could not put aside the passions of the war. 

Who were these irrepressibles? In Charleston they were the 
“Liberty Boys” of a few years before, with an additional rabble 
which had followed the Americans back into the city. The first men 
to join hands under the Liberty Tree in Charleston in 1766 had 
included two carpenters, a retailer, a boat-builder, a painter and 
glazier, an upholsterer, a bookkeeper, three coach-makers, a black¬ 
smith, a butcher, a factor, a schoolmaster, an upholsterer, and a join¬ 
er who was described as the oldest and most influential mechanic of 
the city. 62 These laboring men who had played a useful part with 

61 McCrady. “S. Ca. in the Rev.,” 1780-83, p. 689-90. 

02 Johnson, “Traditions and Reminiscences, Ch. I. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


398 

their political turbulence early in the Revolution, now played an evil 
role. Their chief leader in their useful days had been Gadsden; their 
chief leader now was Commodore Gillon. The future commodore, 
when the war began, was a merchant and shipper, with an extensive 
European connection, and was noted for his wealth and profuse 
style of living. He was not of the born Charleston aristocracy, but 
had begun life a poor boy in Rotterdam, and had come to the city 
as the master of a brigantine. Active and pushing, he first made 
himself useful in the war as an importer of munitions for Congress 
and the State; with two small vessels in 1778 he captured a pair of 
British blockading privateers, and drove off a third; and later he 
commanded the frigate South Carolina, a French vessel which he 
obtained in Amsterdam. 63 

Gillon had early been appointed naval commander for South 
Carolina, and after some time was sent to Europe to try to purchase 
three frigates for the State. This mission did not succeed, partly 
because of what Henry Laurens called Gillon’s “fervor for accomp¬ 
lishing everything by the force of his own powers.” However, some 
of his achievements abroad were of value, and he generously con¬ 
tributed to the Revolution from his own pocket. During the British 
occupation of Charleston his estate was sequestrated, his wife was 
expelled, and his son was sent a prisoner to St. Augustine, injuries 
which Gillon never forgot. A rash, heady, outspoken man, he 
easily mingled with and led the “mob.” Thanks to his youth in 
Europe and later sojourns there, he could speak seven languages 
and write five, but he had no sympathy for refinements in educa¬ 
tion. When one day in the Legislature Charles Pinckney used a 
sounding Latin quotation, Gillon contemptuously capped it with one 
in German. 

Gillon and his followers were indignant over the softening of the 
Confiscation Act. They could hardly restrain themselves when the 
exempted men took up their residence in Charleston. The news of 
the preliminary treaty of peace, with its clauses favorable to British 
and Tory residents, reached America in March, 1783, and added 
fuel to their anger. The result appeared in rioting. In general, the 
mob was satisfied with ducking its victims or tarring and feathering 
them, but by midsummer four men had been murdered in Charleston, 


83 For a life of Gillon, see S. C. Hist, and Gen. Mag., IX; see also Johnson, 
“Traditions and Reminiscences,” 127 ff. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 399 

and one outbreak there reached serious proportions. We wished, 
said one radical, 64 to see the laws of the Jacksonborough Legislature 
enforced against the abandoned parricides who tried to destroy our 
liberties. We do not mind if the net offered by the legislation is 
evaded by the small flies, the farmers and shopkeepers, but we hate 
the wasps and hornets, the influential aristocrats, who are breaking 
it. These nabobs, he pursued, accepted British protection and 
engaged in the rum trade, or fled to the interior with their negroes 
and left Charleston to be defended against Clinton by the honest 
workmen. They suffered no penalty, and should now be punished. 

The street rioting, thus flimsily excused, excited the indignation 
of all moderates and conservatives. Governor Guerard, with the 
leading gentlemen behind him, promptly interfered. The planters 
published a warning that they would ride into Charleston by thou¬ 
sands if needed. We have little reward for the sacrifices of eight 
years of war, they declared in the Gazette of the State f if we are to 
be governed by the passions of individuals, and not by laws. To 
be sure, the planters and merchants, many of them deeply in debt 
to the British, were themselves far from cordial to their late enemies. 
At a great public meeting in Charleston on July 21, attended by 
many of the upper as well as the lower classes, it was unanimously 
resolved that the Legislature be petitioned to prevent the return of 
Tories who had borne arms with the British; and that it also be 
requested not to do more for the adherents of Great Britain in the 
war than was guaranteed them by the preliminary articles of peace. 
But South Carolinians of the dominant lowland ranks were not only 
shocked by the disorders, but felt a threat against their supremacy 
in the talk of “nabobs.” 65 


“ Brutus, in S. Ca. Gazette, August 6, 27, 1783. _ , <<T , „ TT , 

65 s Ca Gazette, July 22, 1783; Pa. Gazette, August 20; McRee s Iredell, II, 67. 
What the Tories were suffering at this time is made plain by a June letter in the 
Providence Gazette, July 19, 1783: “On the 16th came on at Charleston the sales 
of the property of the loyalists, which I am told amounted to £120,000 sterling, 
though I should think it more. This week the sales at Camden and Ninety-Six 
are to begin. The terms of the sales were, five years credit with interest from 
possession, at 7 per cent, and on account of the credit most lots went off at three 
times their value. It was but a short time I stayed at the sales—the scene was 
too affecting to be looked an with composure. The loyalists ladies in number from 
twenty to thirty, attended the sales themselves, in hope, as it is the all they and 
their children had to depend on, humanity and compassion might operate on the 
minds of the crowd, and that none would bid against them. Full of this idea, they 
were attended by General Greene, Colonel Washington and Colonel Hustis; but 
they were unfortunately mistaken.—A Mrs. Inglis claimed property as her own, not 
her husband’s, and referred to proofs: However, the sale went on; the house was 
put up at £1500, and was raised upon her to £2620. A Mr. Burns property sold 
for about £12,000. This gentleman died about ten years ago in Britain; his son, 
the heir a young boy at his education in Scotland, and, I believe never was in 
America’ May the Lord reward our ministers according to their works! 



400 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Gillon and his aides formed two ultra-democratic societies. One 
was termed the Marine Anti-Britannic Society, had no members 
outside of Charleston or the near vicinity, and existed ostensibly to 
nurture an interest in naval affairs and to care for the dependents 
of old sailors, but actually to breathe fire against Tories and “the 
natural enemy,” England. It celebrated the first anniversary of 
Evacuation Day at the City Tavern. An elegant dinner was served 
in the Long Room, with a peal from the bells of St. Michael’s at the 
beginning, and military music between the courses. There were 
thirteen toasts, all expressing hostility for “the yet inexorable foe to 
American greatness, the haughty recusant of reciprocity, and the 
votary of monopoly,” and for the “Tory caitiffs.” But the more 
important society was the Whig Club of Six Hundred, partly a 
secret organization, which tried to extend its political influence 
throughout the State. Both were angered by the definitive treaty, 
published in the Gazette oj the State of December 18, 1783. 
They were more angry when Governor Guerard’s message early the 
next spring asked the Legislature to remit the penalties provided 
for those who had only taken British protection. 66 

New outbursts of violence in both city and country marked the 
early months of 1784. When a dozen Tory farmers failed to leave 
their Fishing Creek plantations as soon as their old neighbors de¬ 
manded, eight were slain and the other four escaped to the coast 
penniless. Other Tories were given “the juice of the hickory” on 
their bare backs to within an inch of their lives. 67 In Charleston 
the storehouses on the wharf filled with confiscated property were 
fired in April. “It must distress and alarm every good citizen,” 
declared a writer in the Gazette oj the State, “to see the many insults 
on government so frequently happening ... at the corner of almost 
every street. Where can this end? . . . Are we henceforth to look 
upon ourselves as under an orderly established government or a set 
of self-created upstart bullying censors? No man that is not wil¬ 
fully blind, but must have seen from whence sprang the shameful 
riot of last year; which it is well known greatly injured the Trade 
and Credit of this country.” 68 

The enmity of the democrats for the “nabobs” had some amusing 
aspects. Many radicals petitioned Governor Guerard on April 14, 

88 S. Ca. Gazette, December 18, 1783. 

87 Ibid., April 29, 1784; Md. Journal, July 13, 1784. 

68 S. Ca. Gazette, May 6, 1784. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 401 

1784, to forbid any more dancing assemblies in the State House. 
The growth of luxury, and dissipation, they said, was alarming to 
men who had seen aristocracy decline during the Revolution and 
hoped it would never rear its head again. Being a tactful aristocrat, 
Governor Guerard asked the Legislature to take the requested 
action, pointing to the danger that the animosity and partisan 
hatreds kindling in the city might be made uncontrollable by some 
trifle; but the Senate refused to act, and the dances continued. 
The imbroglio that spring between stiff old Ex-Governor Rutledge 
and William Thompson, keeper of the City Tavern, was serious. 

On St. Patrick’s Day a negro wench belonging to Rutledge ob¬ 
tained his permission to ask Thompson if she might go upstairs in 
the tavern to watch the City Artillery firing. Thompson refused, 
and Rutledge called him to his mansion to explain the supposed 
affront. The two men already detested each other. Thompson’s 
tavern and the streets near it were a resort for the rioters who had 
been tarring and feathering Tories, while he had insulted several 
gentlemen on their way to the dancing assemblies. Disorders by his 
friends had been expected on the very night of St. Patrick’s Day. The 
interview developed into a heated quarrel; Thompson was shown the 
door; and he had the effrontery to challenge Rutledge. As a mem¬ 
ber of the Legislature, Rutledge called this challenge to the attention 
of the House, and Thompson soon found himself in the city jail. 
Though several of his friends sat in the House, it was unanimous 
in confining him—Thomas Bee wanted him banished. But once 
in prison he had a host of applauders; the Marine Anti-Britannic 
Society published its congratulations upon his manly resistance to 
aristocratic principles, and when he was released he and his friends 
concocted a venomous address. The people must oppose, he said, 
“the nabobs of this State, their servile toad-eaters, the bobs, and the 
servilely servile tools and lickspittles of power to both, the 
bobbetts.” 69 

The political contest reached a climax in the city election of 
September 13, 1784, in which an intendant—corresponding to 
Mayor—was chosen by popular vote from the city wardens. By 
election day intelligent citizens were keenly aware that the disorders 
were ruining the trade and public credit of the State. They believed 
that if they could have three or four years of prosperous trade with 

« 9 See S. Ca. Gazette, April is, 22, 29. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


402 

Europe and the West Indies they would be on solid ground again. 
Should they imperil this for a mean gratification of the feeling of re¬ 
venge? They knew also that every outburst in Charleston disgusted 
the planters. In a letter published two days before the election 
Gadsden warned “the public in general, and Commodore Gillon in 
particular,” that a wedge was being driven between the rural and 
urban interests. The State would see through the selfishness and 
demagoguery of the reckless Charleston agitators, he said, and might 
even be provoked to take away the city charter. The extremists 
answered with more abuse of the “nabobs,” and especially of the 
legislators. “I know the generality of the citizens despise the 
generality of the members,” wrote Gillon; “as is evident from the 
publications condemning the measures they pursue.” Most of the 
publications, however, were actually upon the other side, for the 
conservatives wielded the best pens, and the Gazette was glad to 
enjoy the State printing. When the polls opened, the radicals 
supported Gillon, and the conservatives the incumbent, Richard 
Hutson. The latter was reelected by the decisive vote of 387 to 
260. Where, asked the Gazette , were the Six Hundred—in the 
country for their health? “ ’Tis matter for great triumph—Law and 
Liberty trampling on Anarchy and Tyranny,” it said. Thenceforth 
the disorders subsided. 70 

A sensation followed the election, however, when on September 
16, 1784, the South Carolina Gazette published a secret letter which 
the corresponding committee of the Whig Club of Six Hundred had 
sent throughout the State in advance of the fall elections for the 
Assembly. It stated that the Club depended upon the citizens to 
see that the Legislature was radical. No man ought to be chosen 
who would not bind himself to act as his constituents directed; and 
the voters should assert, two months before the election, their de¬ 
termination to support no one but a “Democratic Whig.” Liberty 
in the State hung upon this vigilance: 

For we tell you, that most of the wealthy families of this commonwealth, equally 
in the country as in the city and its vicinage, yet retain their former principles of 
monopolizing power, and all the honorary and lucrative offices of the State to them¬ 
selves, their families and dependents; [they hope] by destroying the republican 
equality of citizenship, for which they generally neither toiled nor spun, and for 
which the middling and the poor had shed their blood in profusion, to introduce 
family influences into the government, and thereby establish in their own hands an 
odious aristocracy over their betters. 


70 S. Ca. Gazette, passim, especially September n, 14, 1784. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 403 


This direct indictment of the Charleston and low-country oligarchy, 
in which there was much force, was calculated to appeal to up- 
country farmers as well as to Charleston mechanics and shopkeepers. 
The letter adroitly mingled an appeal to the prejudice against Tories 
with an appeal to the prejudice against the wealthy, privileged 
aristocracy, and asked for the establishment of new Whig Clubs in 
various localities all over the State, to be bound together by active 
correspondence. “Elect no wealthy candidate, who is a . . . suppli¬ 
cant for your votes from this city, where, if he had been a good 
man, he would have been undoubtedly chosen; and elect no man 
who is not a permanent resident of the parish or district he is set 
up for.” It was true that many legislators sat for districts in which 
they owned lands but seldom or never resided. In conclusion, the 
letter abused the lawyers, “that double-tongued race of men, who 
are bred up in chicanery and deceit,” for their defense of the loyalists. 

This statement of the radical position angered all conservatives, 
rich or poor—and many were now very poor. They avowed that 
they had no doubt the letter was written by Commodore Gillon. 
They denied that any offices were monopolized. Who were the 
members of this idle aristocracy, supposed to be engrossing them? 
They were the men who had fought to the last under Lincoln, and 
who had been exiled to St. Augustine, or detained as prisoners at 
Haddrel’s Point, or immured in Charleston dungeons, and whose 
names the British had enrolled in the black and dismaying catalogue 
of confiscation or sequestration. Meanwhile, the factious Gillon 
had been safe abroad, gloating over his ability to win large sums of 
prize money by easy raids upon commerce. But the radicals, their 
opponents rejoiced, had been prostrated by the city election, and 
now the opportunity was at hand in the legislative election to de¬ 
stroy their faction utterly. 71 

It was plain at the outset of 1785 that new political questions were 
taking the place of the old quarrels over loyalists and nabobs, for 
governmental realism demanded attention to economic and sectional 
issues. The spring session of the Legislature showed the conserva¬ 
tives as well entrenched as ever. They gave the Governorship to 
General William Moultrie, a patrician who had made a brilliant 
Revolutionary record; he had been the first American officer to 
hoist a distinctive battle-flag, the hero of the attack upon Sullivan’s 

11 S. Ca. Gazette, September 25, 1784. 


404 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Island, and the most courageous leader in the defense of Charleston. 
All over the State men were growing more ready to forget the rancors 
of war and to frown upon attacks against the Tories. Aedanus 
Burke wrote from Ninety-Six that, although the people there had 
just lynched a Tory murderer named Love, they were eager for 
tranquillity and would harm no loyalist soldier except those guilty 
of wanton barbarity in the war. 72 Many plunderers and other mis¬ 
chievous loyalists had returned, and were not molested, nor did 
resentment exist against fighters under the British flag who had 
killed patriots of the Ninety-Six region in open action. Governor 
Moultrie tried to remove the principal cause of outbreaks when he 
warned all offenders still under decree of banishment from South 
Carolina or any other commonwealth to leave the State. 73 

A clash between the upland and lowland sections had been evident 
as soon as the war ended. In 1784 the question of a Constitutional 
Convention arose in the Legislature, the upper country wanting a 
revision and a larger representation. We have seen that the Senate 
defeated the proposal. Next year a reapportionment of the Legisla¬ 
ture took place, as stipulated by the Constitution, but without ma¬ 
terially affecting the strength of the sections. When the houses met 
in the spring of 1786, circumstances presented the question of re¬ 
moving the capital to a more central location, and the back country 
urged it forcibly. The State House had burned, and the Legislature 
had to sit in the Custom House in Charleston, fitted up with plain 
benches and unpainted desks. All the members from above the 
fall line agreed that the next session must be held in their section, 
but a quarrel occurred as to the exact place. Sumter owned large 
tracts on the Wateree River, the northern of the two streams which 
unite to form the great central river of the State, the Santee. In 
anticipation of the capital’s removal, soon after the war he had 
commenced building a village there called Stateburg. However, 
Colonel Wade Hampton, Colonel T. Taylor, Commodore Gillon, and 
others of influence owned land on the Congaree, or southern of the 
two streams, and insisted upon its advantage. The head of naviga¬ 
tion on the Congaree was duly selected, and a site laid out for the 
future city of Columbia. 

The financial crisis which overtook South Carolina in 1785, and 
the necessity for laws to relieve debtors, introduced sinister elements 

73 N. Y. Packet, July 25, 1785. 

73 N. Y. Packet, April 11, 1785; Md. Journal, April 19, 1785. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 405 


into State politics. The notorious Pine Barren Act, authorizing the 
tender of lands to satisfy a debt, expired in the spring of 1786. 
But during the latter year the diarist Timothy Ford declared the 
government still uncertain and capricious. A variety of factions 
were to be distinguished in the Legislature, but the debtor interest 
was predominant; and too many laws, thought Ford, were enacted 
not because they were right, but because they satisfied a clamor. 
Edward Rutledge wrote his friend Jay in the fall of 1786 that 
several of the ablest South Carolinians had grown so disgusted with 
“the artifices of some unworthy characters” that they had resolved 
to retire from public life. Henry Laurens, back from his diplomatic 
service in Europe, for example, did so, dividing his time after 1785 
between his plantation on the Cooper and his house in the city of 
Charleston . 74 

Though during two years the suffering was acute, South Carolina 
rode out the financial storm . 75 By 1788, as in other States, pros¬ 
perity was returning. As it came, the undesirable element in the 
Legislature weakened, and conservative and federalist influences 
gained strength. In the spring of 1787 General Moultrie was suc¬ 
ceeded as Governor by Thomas Pinckney a representative of one 
of the principal Charleston families. Pinckney had been educated 
in England; he was the son of the wealthy agent whom South 
Carolina had kept in the mother country before the Revolution, and 
a cousin of the Charles Pinckney who died disgraced by his sur¬ 
render to British authority; and he was destined, like his brother 
C. C. Pinckney, to be a leading advocate of the Federal Constitution. 
His election by 163 votes out of 17° was an evidence that the sane, 
well-educated, aristocratic element in the Legislature was quite too 


powerful to oppose. It was followed by even more reassuring evi¬ 
dence: the four delegates sent by South Carolina to the Constitu¬ 
tional Convention—John Rutledge, Charles and C. C. Pinckney, 
and Pierce Butler—were all men of the low country, and all believers 


n a stronger federal government. 


74 S Ca. Hist, and Gen. Mag., XIII, « 8 i ff.; Jay’s “Works,” III, 216-19; Wallace’s 

<I ” 1 South” Carolina’s financial measures are^ treated% 

iamsay’s account of conditions is wort g irresistible when the depression was 

ells us that the clamor for stay laws became iriresis^ executioni sold at so low a 

it its height, for property, ithout paying the creditor. . . . Assemblies 

mice as frequently ruined the debtor without paying j ired » t0 give relief. 

itay l^ws ^iT^an^emissio^i^^paper j^ure^the^mo^a^of'the^peojrle^and 

the final ruin of the unfortunate debtors.” 


406 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


V. Ratification in the Carolinas 

In North Carolina a conservative was elected Governor in the 
same year that Pinckney took his seat in Charleston. In the spring 
of 1787 the Legislature made Samuel Johnston the fifth executive of 
the State; a recognition of ability long overdue, but not a sign of 
any greatly increased strength on the part of the conservative party. 
The radicals still held North Carolina in their hands as the old 
issues passed away, and the new issue of a strong or a weak national 
government became the center of attention. The conservatives of 
course became federalists. They had been reinforced before 1787 
by several new men of ability, most notably by Davie, who had 
settled at Halifax and appeared regularly in the Legislature; Richard 
Dobbs Spaight, who like Davie was British-born and had won dis¬ 
tinction in the war; and Hugh Williamson, who had joined the 
Edenton group, and who varied his service in the Continental 
Congress with terms in the Commons House. Williamson was by 
origin a highly educated Pennsylvania physician and teacher, who 
at one time had been intimately associated with Franklin. But the 
radicals, though they had no better leaders than Person, Timothy 
Blood worth, Judge Spencer, and Willie Jones, had the votes and 
the loyalty of the great majority of the people. They wanted no 
interference with the government from outside the State; low taxes; 
and a genuinely democratic administration—i.e., one in which the 
Legislature should continue dominant, and in which no irksome 
property qualification should be required of voters. 76 

The North Carolina Legislature sent a delegation to the Consti¬ 
tutional Convention only after much pressure had been exerted upon 
it by Johnston, Iredell, and others. Caswell and Willie Jones refused 
to attend, and the five who went to Philadelphia were Martin, Davie, 
Hugh Williamson, Spaight and William Blount. Martin alone was 
opposed to the drafting of a new Constitution. But this delegation 
misrepresented the State, for most North Carolinians regarded even 
a revision of the Articles of Confederation with distrust. Some, like 
Willie Jones, disliked the proposed Constitution because they dis¬ 
liked the idea of a Federal judiciary. Most of them, like Thomas 

78 H. G. Connor, “The Convention of 1788-89,” N. Ca. Booklet, Vol. IV No 4 • 
Amer Hist. Assn. Report, 1895, I, 101 ff.; C. L. Raper, “Why North Carolina At 
First Refused to Ratify.” 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 407 


Person with his tens of thousands of acres, disliked it because they 
feared the Federal tax-gatherer. Specie was almost unknown in 
most rural districts, the paper medium was worth hardly half its 
face value, and the people found it hard enough to pay their State 
taxes alone. Agriculture was imperfectly developed, and trade, which 
would have fostered a sentiment of federalism, was not developed 
at all. The western regions had little conception of what the benefits 
of the “new roof” might be. Finally, an intense individualism had 
stamped the North Carolinians, and they believed the proposed in¬ 
strument a threat to State Rights. 

In the upland part of South Carolina much of the population was 
homogeneous with that across the border, and it also disliked the 
idea of a distant government sending its revenue agents and marshals 
into every county. But in South Carolina, it was the men corres¬ 
ponding to Johnston, Iredell, Williamson, and Davie who controlled 
the government throughout. 

Preceding South Carolina’s ratifying convention there occurred 
(January, 1788) an illuminating debate in the Legislature. 77 The 
opposition to the Constitution was led by Rawlins Lowndes, only a 
few up-country men—among them Patrick Calhoun of Ninety-Six, 
father of John C. Calhoun—sustaining him. Lowndes had been too 
conservative to approve at first of the Declaration of Independence, 
and now was too conservative to approve of a competent national 
government. He argued that the Confederation amply met the 
nation’s needs; that South Carolina ought not to be limited to two 
decades in the importation of negroes, a commerce that “can be 
justified on the principles of religion and humanity”; that the Con¬ 
stitution would give New England a monopoly of the carrying trade; 
and that it did not sufficiently embody the principle of checks and 
balances. He even argued that the States should have the power 
to issue their own paper money. The principal refutation of his 
objections was undertaken by John Rutledge, C. C. Pinckney, and 
Pierce Butler, who had signed the Constitution, but they had capable 
helpers. The whole tendency of the State’s history since 1783 had 
been federalist. In the spring of 1784 the Legislature, after flaring 
out at Greene, had repassed the bill giving Congress power to levy a 
five per cent, impost, the vote being three to one. The next year 
Congress had been granted authority to regulate the State’s trade, 

11 Elliot’s “Debates,” IV, 253 ff. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


408 

though most men believed that such regulation would injure South 
Carolina by lessening the vessels available to carry her products. 

The ratifying convention in Charleston was held before the similar 
body in North Carolina met (May 13, 1788). Sumter captained 
the back-country anti-federalists, including Wade Hampton of Saxe- 
Gotha, Aedanus Burke of the Lower District, and William Hill. 78 
Governor Pinckney presided, and although a very inadequate report 
of the proceedings exists, there is evidence that C. C. Pinckney spoke 
more effectively on the Federalist side than anyone else. After but 
eleven days, the Constitution was approved by a vote of 140 to 73, 
with only 21 of the noes coming from the Tidewater region. Much 
may be said against an apportionment which in the Legislature and 
Convention gave the lowlands their excessive strength; but much 
may also be said in praise of the results. 

A different story must be told of North Carolina. When her con¬ 
vention met in a church at Hillsborough (July 21, 1788), out of 
284 members the anti-federalists had a majority of one hundred. 
A half dozen of the best conservatives, including Hooper, General 
Martin, William Blount, and Allen Jones, had been defeated for 
seats. 79 The majority was fully responsive to the leadership of 
Willie Jones, Person, and Bloodworth. The chief federalists 
present—Governor Johnston, Iredell, Maclaine, and Spaight—saw 
insuperable difficulties before them. For a few hours it seemed un¬ 
certain whether there would be any debate at all, for Willie Jones 
suggested that, to save expense, the delegates vote at once upon 
ratification, and adjourn. But when Iredell declared that he was 
amazed by this proposal to decide without deliberation perhaps the 
greatest question ever submitted in North Carolina, the anti-feder¬ 
alists assented. 

The arguments of the opponents of ratification were simple. It 
was courting tyranny, they asserted, to give Congress the power to 
levy and collect taxes. They pointed out that Congress had the 
right to fix the time and place for the election of its members, and 
that this would help create a central legislature virtually independent 
of the people. They contended that the Federal courts would over- 

78 McCrady, “S. C. in the Rev.,” 1780-83, pp. 731-32. 

79 Hooper wrote Iredell of the Constitutution: “The Western country in general 
is decidedly opposed to it. Mr. Moore and myself essayed in vain for a seat in 
the Convention. Our sentiments had transpired before the election.” N. C. Booklet, 
IV, No. 4. In fact, Hooper had a fist-fight with an opponent, and “came off second 
best, with his eyes blacked.”. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 409 

ride all others, and would destroy a citizen’s right to justice in the 
courts of his own State. A different kind of attack was made by one 
of the ablest delegates, the Rev. David Caldwell. Caldwell, as a poor 
Pennsylvania farmer, had been seized at twenty-five with a burning 
desire to preach, had persevered against many hardships until a.t 
thirty-six Princeton gave him a degree and at thirty-eight he was 
licensed a minister, and, removing to North Carolina, speedily became 
known for his earnestness and eloquence throughout the uplands. 80 
At Hillsborough Caldwell expounded the compact theory of govern¬ 
ment, and demanded that the Constitution be tested by it. But the 
plainer objections appealed to the plain delegates. Willie Jones 
soon outlined his plan for obtaining changes. 

... I beg leave to mention the authority of Mr. Jefferson, whose abilities and 
respectability are well known. When the Convention sat in Richmond, Virginia, Mr. 
Madison received a letter from him. In that letter he said he wished nine States 
would adopt it [the Constitution], not because it deserved ratification, but to preserve 
the Union. But he wished the other four States would reject it, that there might 
be a certainty of obtaining amendments. 

Admitting that it would take eighteen months to frame amend¬ 
ments, Jones declared that “for my part, I would rather be eighteen 
years out of the Union than adopt it in its present defective form.” It 
soon became clear that the Convention would not ratify even condi¬ 
tionally. Some delegates were incredibly bitter and narrow. Person 
is said to have remarked that “Washington was a damned rascal and 
traitor to his country for putting his hand to such an infamous 
paper” as the new Constitution. On August 1 the committee of the 
whole presented a resolution calling for a declaration of rights and 
for amendments to “the most ambiguous and exceptionable” parts 
of the Constitution, and next day it was adopted, 184 to 84. North 
Carolina was now an independent nation outside the Union. 81 

Iredell had expressed a fear that if his State once broke the bonds 
of the Union, it would remain outside permanently. But this was 
idle; the example of the sister States and the logic of events brought 
it inside the circle within a little more than a year. Even at the 
fall session of the Legislature in 1788 the anti-federalist majority 
showed signs of weakening, for it called a new convention to be held 


80 Foote, “Sketches of N. C.” Ch. 17. . . 4 

81 Elkanah Watson (“Memoirs,” 262-65) gives an amusing instance of the way 
ignorant North Carolinians misrepresented the Constitution. He heard a country 
preacher explain to the voters what the Federal District, ten miles square, was for 
“This, my friends,” said he, “will be walled in or fortified. Here an army of 
50,000, or perhaps 100,000 men, will be finally embodied, and will sally forth, and 
enslave the people, who will be gradually disarmed. 


4io 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


at Fayetteville in November, 1789. Long before this date arrived 
it was known that the Constitution would be amended by the addi¬ 
tion of a bill of rights. In the elections for the convention Willie 
Jones failed of being returned for his county, a heavy blow to the 
anti-federalists; and when it met, Governor Johnston, Davie, and 
Hugh Williamson so easily overbore the remaining opposition that 
the Constitution was ratified 195 to 77. Another important victory 
for the federalists followed that same month when the Legislature 
voted upon a long list of nominees for United States Senator, and 
defeating Person, Bloodworth, and other nominees, chose Johnston 
and Benjamin Hawkins—the latter a friend of Washington’s and for 
some years a delegate in the Continental Congress. The South 
Carolina Legislature of course also elected two federalist Senators, 
Pierce Butler and Ralph Izard, both lowlanders. But in South 
Carolina as in North Carolina some of the district elections for 
Federal Representatives went in favor of the opposition. From the 
former State were chosen General Sumter and Aedanus Burke as 
well as federalists like Daniel Huger; from the latter there appeared 
John B. Ashe and Timothy Bloodworth as well as federalists like 
Hugh Williamson. 82 


VI. Georgia Politics, 1775-1789 


When we turn to the history of Georgia we turn to a State in 
which the vicissitudes of government were even greater than in the 
Carolinas. It was a younger, weaker State. Not only did the 
British drive the patriot authorities from village to village, and make 
the Province their own; the disputes between the two patriot factions 
became so angry that in the darkest hours of the war two sets of 
officials were struggling with one another. 

Archibald Bulloch was President of Georgia when it adopted the 
Constitution of 1777: the foremost patriot leader, who as head of the 
temporary government had called together the Convention which 
framed the Constitution. Born in Charleston, he was well educated, 
he had practiced law along with his activities as a planter, and in a 
political career that dated from his entrance to the House in 1768, 
he had evinced some of the administrative grasp and decision shown 


««T ? <, ii« n ¥£ ter on P?! ltlcs 9 in North and South Carolina, see McRee' 

Iredell, II, 170-72; files of S. C. Gazette; Jervey’s “Hayne and His Times,” Intrc 
auction. At the same time that Pinckney was reelected Governor in January i78< 
by a majority of 179, Gillon received 82 votes for Lieutenant-Governor, and wa 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 411 

long after by a descendant of his, Theodore Roosevelt. The Legis¬ 
lature displayed its confidence in him when in February, 1777, fight¬ 
ing having begun along the coast and river near Savannah it re¬ 
quested him to assume extraordinary powers during the emergency. 
But immediately thereafter he died, and with him died all hope of 
preventing a split between the radical and conservative Whigs. The 
latter, after laboring so effectively during 1775 to delay Georgia’s 
participation in the Revolution, were now hopelessly outnumbered. 
The Council of Safety elevated Button Gwinnett, one of the most 
hot-tempered radicals, to Bulloch’s place until such time as a 
Governor could be regularly chosen under the Constitution. Gwin¬ 
nett was a native of Bristol, England, who had stocked an island 
plantation with slaves and grown wealthy. When the Legislature 
met in May he expected to be chosen the first Governor. But by 
adroit maneuvering, the conservatives saw that the place went in¬ 
stead to John Adam Treutlen, a representative of the wing of the 
Salzburger Germans which had taken the patriot side. Gwinnett 
had already been on bad terms with Lachlan McIntosh, a conserva¬ 
tive who had been appointed brigadier-general in preference to him, 
and now was enraged to hear that McIntosh gloated over the election. 
They fought a duel at twelve paces and Gwinnett was killed. 

Henceforth the conservatives waged a losing war with the radicals, 
who dominated the Legislature. Lachlan McIntosh had to seek 
military service in another part of the Union. The chief remaining 
conservative leaders were Joseph Habersham, the son of a teacher 
who, coming to Georgia with Whitefield, had risen to become the 
most influential man in the Colony; William Few; and John Wereat. 
They denounced the activities of the popular Liberty Society in 
Savannah, and complained that the measures of the Legislature were 
concerted by a caucus of the radical leaders at night meetings in a 
Savannah tavern. 83 Wereat called Joseph Wood, whom the radical 
majority elected to the Continental Congress in 1777, a demagogue 
and scoundrel, who had never done an honest deed in his life. The 
radicals were accused, with reason, of having allowed the Constitu¬ 
tion to be flagrantly violated when it was first put into operation. 
Savannah and Sunbury had not been allowed separate elections to 
choose their members of the Legislature, as the Constitution intended, 
but the counties in which they lay had chosen the representatives in 

88 Frank Moore, “Materials for History/’ 39 ff- 


412 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


a general county election. Several representatives had been elected 
for counties in which they did not reside and one man after a resi¬ 
dence of only three months in the State, though the Constitution 
demanded a year. But the year 1777 passed without marked poli¬ 
tical disturbance. The year 1778 opened with the extremists still 
in control of the Legislature, and they elected John Houstoun, one 
of the most ardent of the patriots, the second Governor. 

Thus far the only military operations of note had been two 
abortive attacks by the patriots upon the British post at St. Augus¬ 
tine, in 1776 and 1777 respectively; but with the spring of 1778 the 
Georgians saw that they would soon be on the defensive in a des¬ 
perate struggle. In April the Executive Council, saying that it was 
impressed by the “calamitous situation” of the State, temporarily 
surrendered all its powers into Governor Houstoun’s hands. The 
fall of Savannah in December, after a siege of less than a week, 
threw the whole State open to the British. Within a few weeks it 
was entirely overrun. Taken on two sides, for the forces which cap¬ 
tured Savannah, under Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, were assisted 
by a column which General Prevost led overland from East Florida, 
the Georgians were completely overmastered. The popular Governor 
of Colonial days, James Wright, was replaced in his chair in Savan¬ 
nah, the confiscation acts of the Whigs were turned against their 
own property, and many citizens accepted British protection. 

The most precarious and uncertain existence was led by the patriot 
government after the fall of Savannah. Governor Houstoun and his 
Council, fleeing from the coast, summoned the Legislature to meet 
in Augusta to elect a new Governor, but Augusta was at once cap¬ 
tured. No legislative session was possible anywhere, and after 
Houstoun’s term expired, the Council continued to exercise the 
Governor’s authority. This being the only course possible, no one 
was troubled because it was extra-constitutional. In midsummer of 
1779, the British having abandoned Augusta, frantic efforts were 
made to bring the Legislature together there, but so nearly ex¬ 
tinguished was the patriot cause that no quorum could be obtained. 
Finally, the conservatives resolved to take matters into their own 
hands. They constituted a majority of the twenty-five men whom 
it was possible to get together at Augusta. This rump body orga¬ 
nized, and on July 24 appointed nine men, including Wereat, Haber¬ 
sham, John Dooly, and Seth Jphn Cuthbert, to be a new Executive 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 413 

Council; instructing them to use every power necessary for the 
safety of the State, but to keep to the spirit of the Constitution. The 
Council on August 6 chose its most prominent member, Wereat, to 
be President, making him virtual Governor. 84 

This coup was received with indignation by the radicals. Seizing 
upon the excuse that the rump Legislature had acted without con¬ 
stitutional warrant, they at once repudiated the authority of Wereat 
and his Council. Their leader was George Walton, who had been 
captured at Savannah and later exchanged, and who with his asso¬ 
ciates now asserted that the Council was in part made up of Tories, 
and condemned the whole body as illegal, unconstitutional, and dan¬ 
gerous. Their obvious course was to organize a rival government. 
Walton, Richard Howley, George Wells, and others called upon the 
people to choose a new Legislature, to meet at Augusta in November, 
and these new legislators, duly assembling on November 4, elected 
Walton Governor for the brief remainder of the year, also appointing 
a Council. There were thus two Governors and two Executive 
Councils for the last seven weeks of the year. Neither Governor 
was regular nor constitutional, neither would have aught to do with 
the other, and the affairs of the State were in the utmost confusion. 
The combined effort of General Lincoln and Admiral D’Estaing to 
recover Savannah from the British by assault having been bloodily 
repulsed in October, the State—which for a moment had hoped for 
freedom—again passed almost completely under British domination. 
Yet the bitterness between the two patriot factions was intense. One 
of Walton’s first acts (November 30) was to forge a letter to 
Congress, purporting to be signed by Speaker William Glascock, 
assuring it that all Georgians were hostile to the appointment of 
General McIntosh to command in the State, and asking it to keep him 
in some distant field. This ugly quarrel, paralyzing resistance to 
the enemy, was even more disgraceful than that which rent Penn¬ 
sylvania when Howe first menaced the latter State. 

One regular government soon took the place of the two bickering 
Whig bodies, but the quarrels of faction continued. Both the radi¬ 
cals and moderates participated in an election for a new Legislature 
which was held at the close of 1779, in response to a proclamation 
issued by Wereat. The radicals were certain to win, for the rich 
southern counties in which the conservatives were strongest were 

84 Jones’s “Georgia,” II, 365 ff.; Knight’s “Georgia and the Georgians,” I, 292 ff. 


414 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


held by the British; and when the Assembly met in Augusta early 
in 1780, Walton and his associates completely controlled it. They 
saw to it that it elected Howley Governor, and Wells President of 
the Council, and lost no opportunity to throw odium upon Wereat’s 
emergency administration. One of their first acts was to declare 
that Wereat’s group had exercised powers subversive of the Consti¬ 
tution, and that it had possessed no legal standing whatever. Wereat 
and his friends replied in March, denouncing Walton’s irregular 
Legislature the preceding fall as a manifest breach of the Constitu¬ 
tion. It had been composed of only twenty-odd men, they recited, 
yet they had called themselves the House of Assembly, and had 
actually wielded both the law-making and executive powers. Many 
citizens believed, they added, that this bobtail Assembly was con¬ 
trived simply to further the political interests of Walton and his 
crew. In such manner did the two parties continue squabbling when 
almost the whole State was lost. 

In the spring of 1780 a series of disasters actually brought the 
revolutionary government to the point of extinction. Governor 
Howley set out for the Continental Congress, and President Wells 
died, throwing the executive reins to a totally new hand. When 
this successor and a handful of Councilmen tried to make Augusta 
the seat of their authority, they were chased out by the British. As 
the enemy’s advance spread over the whole lower South in 1780, the 
republicans held in Georgia only two remote upland counties, Rich¬ 
mond and Wilkes; they had been driven back against the frontiers, 
where, in a few settlements to which the British had not penetrated, 
they were menaced by hostile Indians. They had to make their 
capital at an inaccessible hamlet called Heard’s Fort. Many of the 
ablest, most patriotic Whigs had been driven into exile in other 
States. Even Heard’s Fort became so dangerous a post that in May, 
Governor Howley, who had resumed his executive duties, was 
warned by the Council to remove to the Carolinas, lest he be cap¬ 
tured. He took this advice, and again the government lapsed into 
the hands of the Council and its president; the president in turn 
fled to North Carolina, and another took his place. Many Georgians 
felt that it mattered little whether there was a government or not, 
there was so little of the State left to govern. 

As in South Carolina, during 1780 the American flag was carried 
by no armed forces save small bands which, ranging the country 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 415 


rapidly and hiding amid swamps and forests, struck at the enemy 
whenever opportunity offered. Tory bands retaliated, and moved 
through Georgia robbing, burning, and murdering. A loyalist account 
rightly asserts that these skirmishes, with now one side and now the 
other victorious, did nothing but depopulate and ruin the country. 
The Fanning of Georgia was one Thomas Brown, a Tory from the 
beginning, who early in the Revolution had been seized on his farm 
near Augusta, tarred, feathered, and hauled about the streets behind 
a mule. He swore he would have vengeance, and when the British 
gained the upper hand, he took it. As a Colonel in the British forces, 
he was placed in command at Augusta; and with the Tories and 
Indians behind him, he drove the patriots out of the surrounding 
district, confiscated property, and sent even women and children into 
exile in North Carolina. One blazing September day in 1780, 
Brown was attacked by the Whigs under General Elijah Clarke, 
who shut him up in a blockhouse he had built at Augusta, wounded 
him and many of his garrison, and seemed on the point of capturing 
them all. But amid the groans of his thirst-tortured wounded, 
Brown held out. At the last minute he was relieved by the approach 
of a mixed force of Indians and Tories, and he took a fearful re¬ 
venge, hanging all the disabled fighters whom Clarke had left behind. 

But finally, in the spring of 1781, the main British forces marched 
north into Virginia, and it became possible to free part of Georgia. 
Augusta was captured by Henry Lee on June 5 ? i 7 ^ i j an d was at 
once used as a capital by the men who sprang forward to revive the 
State government. Elections for the Legislature were held, and in 
August the Assembly was able to meet again and to choose the first 
regular Governor since Howland’s term had expired at the beginning 
of the year. Governor Nathan Brownson held office for only a few 
months, for in the first days of 1782 another Legislature chose John 
Martin in his stead. Greene and the American troops steadily drove 
the British back, until when they had been shut up in Savannah, 
Martin and his Council were able to move down to Ebenezer, and 
reestablish the patriot administration near the coast. On May 21 
the British were defeated in a smart skirmish near Savannah, and 
on June n evacuated the city and State. 

Under Governor Martin, in 1782 a semblance of peaceful adminis¬ 
tration was fast obtained. When he called the Legislature in special 
session that spring, he was able to announce that three departments 


416 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of government were in full operation. The business transacted at 
this session included a definition of the State boundaries, provision 
for raising the quota of Continental troops, and the establishment of 
a court of claims. Preliminary steps were taken by the Governor to 
stop the border warfare between Whigs and Tories along the Florida 
line, and to check the depredations by the Indians in the upper part 
of Georgia. He had to call attention to the fact that many people of 
the State, “for want of common sustenance, are now reduced to a 
perishing condition”; indeed, the British had so thoroughly devas¬ 
tated Georgia in their slow withdrawal that General Wayne’s troops 
had been obliged to depend upon provisions from the Carolinas. The 
first section to rally was that along the coast, and the conservative 
leader John Wereat set an example of generosity by loading his flat- 
boats with rice, and having them poled up the Savannah to be dis¬ 
tributed among the needy. With the harvesting of the autumn 
crops, however, the country was relieved of its greatest distress. 
Under Governor Lyman Hall, who was elected in 1783 by another 
energetic Legislature, the recuperation of the State—assisted by a 
steady inflow of settlers—continued. 

In its main outlines Georgia’s later history closely resembled 
South Carolina’s. She also had her Jacksonborough Legislature 
when, immediately after the war ended, the question arose of the 
treatment of the Tories and those who had accepted British pro¬ 
tection. “Whereas it is absolutely necessary a fund should be raised 
for defraying the contingent and necessary expenses of this State,” 
declared an act of January, 1782, seizure would be made of the 
estates of all “persons who shall now be, or may have been within 
the British lines, as British subjects, and who are not included in 
the act of confiscation passed March 1, 1778, or in the act for 
burying in oblivion certain high crimes and misdemeanors, passed 
August 12, 1781. . . .” This act of oblivion had pardoned those 
forced to accept British protection during the war, but who had 
joined the American forces before October 1, 1781, and had not 
been guilty of murder or plundering. Naturally, many men who 
were really innocent of any voluntary disloyalty to the United 
States, in or near Savannah, had been unable to take advantage of 
it, and now were to suffer. Moreover, additional harsh legislation 
followed. On May 4 an act was passed confiscating the property 
of additional persons by name; and in August, after Savannah was 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 417 

regained, an act amercing a considerable list of estates 8 per cent., 
and others 12 per cent., was voted. 85 

A natural reaction, as in South Carolina, followed. The Legisla¬ 
ture of 1783 contained men who had given the subject sober thought, 
while eloquent intercession before it was made in favor of the scores 
of worthy Georgians who were being punished far beyond their 
deserts. The result was the passage of legislation to relieve certain 
groups from the decree of banishment, and to transfer the names of 
specified persons from the confiscation lists to the amercement lists. 
When the Tories and loyalists first began to return, unfortunately, 
the same ebullitions of popular violence occurred as in South Caro¬ 
lina. Governor Hall, the Attorney-General, and a majority of the 
Council, moreover, after the Legislature adjourned, refused to abide 
by its decision, and proclaimed their opinion that the enactment re¬ 
admitting the banished loyalists was not law. The Assembly was 
angry for a while, but its indignation cooled. 86 It had all the ad¬ 
vantages which time could give it, and in 1784 it dropped Hall, 
electing John Houstoun, who had been Governor early in the Revolu¬ 
tion. This year, and in every subsequent year until after the ratifi¬ 
cation of the Federal Constitution, some further relaxation of the 
harsh enactments of 1782 was voted. 

Like other Southern States, Georgia had a sectional issue which 
became increasingly prominent after 1783. Population pressed at 
an amazing rate into the inland section. We find Chief Justice 
George Walton, in a charge to the grand jury of Liberty County in 
1784, declaring that “the late amazing augmentation in the number 
of our inhabitants in the Western District will soon give a new 
feature to our political affairs—a consideration which ought to com¬ 
mand the earliest attention to our elder citizens.” 87 The first 
Constitution had provided for eight counties, five in the so-called 
lower district along the coast, two in the middle district half-way 
up the Savannah River, and one in the western or upper district, not 
far from the head of the Savannah. The second Constitution, in 
1789, provided representation for eleven counties, one being added 
in the middle district and two in the upper. The population of the 
upper district in 1791 was 37,946; that of the middle district, 
25,336; and that of the seacoast district, despite its marked pre- 

85 Marbury and Crawford’s “Digest of Laws,” 62-90. 

88 Freeman’s Journal, December 31, 1783. 

87 Jones, “Delegates from Georgia to the Continental Congress, 187-88. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


418 

ponderancy of slaves, only 21,536. Uplanders were naturally in¬ 
clined to complain that new counties were not created fast enough. 

Slowly but steadily, however, the west won concessions for itself. 
It was early provided that, beginning in 1783, for three months each 
summer the executive departments should be transferred from 
Savannah to Augusta, and their work there carried on for the con¬ 
venience of the up-country people. In 1784 was passed the first 
legislation for the University of Georgia, and when this institution 
was opened a short time later it was at Athens, far beyond Augusta 
in the western part of the State. Lowland Georgia was increasingly 
jealous of the upper country, but it could not hold its advantageous 
position so securely as lowland South Carolina. 

Governor Houstoun, who had the satisfaction of laying before the 
Council the announcement of the definite treaty of peace, was suc¬ 
ceeded by Samuel Ebert, who had been Lieutenant-Colonel of the 
State’s first battalion. Ebert gave way to a rich and shrewd Scotch 
merchant of Savannah, Edward Telfair; and Telfair to a man of 
sharply contrasting character, General George Mathews, a Scotch- 
Irishman of Virginia origin, energetic, impetuous, and—though 
able—unlettered. Mathews himself illustrated the land-hunger of 
the time. A keen speculator, he bought at a bargain a large area 
of land on Broad River, called the Goose Pond Tract, and was 
responsible for its colonization. The Governorship was offered in 
1788 to General James Jackson, who had received the formal sur¬ 
render of Savannah, and whose youth—he was but thirty—was for¬ 
gotten in the distinction with which he had served in the field and 
at the bar, but he declined on the ground of inexperience. In his 
place was chosen George Handly, also English-born. 

The feeling of national patriotism was strong in Georgia. In 
1786, when the Legislature delayed granting the national government 
the revenue powers it desired, the protest was instant. The grand 
jury of Wilkes County, in the upper part of the State, presented 
“as a great and dangerous grievance, the refusal of this State to 
grant powers to Congress to lay an impost of five per cent, on all 
foreign articles of commerce imported into this State.” In the low¬ 
lands the grand jury of Liberty County was equally emphatic: “We 
present as a great grievance^ that Congress have not power sufficient 
to carry into effect the regulation of our trade.” 88 Some of the 

88 N. Y. Advertiser, January 18, 1786. 


POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT: THE LOWER SOUTH 419 

considerations that had made Georiga so loyal to the Crown now 
operated to make her loyal to the idea of a strong Union. She 
was the weakest of the States. Her whole population was still less 
in 1788 than that on the bleak hills of Vermont, she was exposed to 
attack by the Indians, the British, and the Spaniards, and her great 
area and rich resources were a tempting prize. Feeling that she 
needed the protection of the rest of the Union, Georgia therefore 
cooperated warmly in the movement which gave the country the 
Federal Constitution. To Philadelphia she sent William Few and 
Abraham Baldwin. The President of the State Convention which 
ratified the Constitution was John Wereat, and the ratification was 
by unanimous vote. 


CHAPTER TEN 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 

An impressive revolution in the character of social institutions 
accompanied the Revolution which we regard as primarily political. 
A number of important changes in the laws and practices concerning 
religion, land-tenure, penal affairs, charities, and education proceeded 
from the establishment of independence, and almost all these changes 
were salutary. In many ways the colonists had been hindered by 
England from taking progressive action. Even if innovation did 
no injury to British interests, it was likely to be inharmonious with 
British traditions, and seemed to broaden the gap between the two 
lands. But all too frequently British interests were involved, as in 
the maintenance of the slave trade, of the Episcopal establishment, 
and of fairly uniform sets of laws in the home and daughter countries. 
Even during the years of fighting the State legislators were busy with 
the overthrow of the Establishment and the guaranty of religious 
liberty; the annulment of laws of entail and primogeniture in favor 
of a democratic system of inheritance; and the opening up, with the 
new political prospects, of new vistas of humanitarianism also. 

I. Progress Towards Religious Freedom 

The establishment of church equality and freedom of conscience 
had always been an ambition of the most liberal colonial 
leaders, and one that in several Colonies had been thwarted by the 
popular majority, not by British authority. Roughly speaking, in 
New England outside Rhode Island the Congregational church was 
favored by the State, though British authority had no predilection 
for it. In the Middle Colonies the Church of England and the 
Friends divided a place of slight advantage over other sects; the 
Anglicans having certain special statutory privileges in a part of New 
York and in Maryland, and the Quakers enjoying real though 

420 



PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 421 


not nominal privilege in Pennsylvania and Delaware. In the South 
the Church of England was bulwarked by the state, but it met a 
rising opposition from the increase of dissenters. Nowhere in 
British America were the Catholics wholly immune from religious 
disadvantages. It is not strange that New England, considering 
the circumstances of its settlement, should have refused to give all 
Protestant sects absolute equality; and complete tolerance was a 
much more difficult goal in Massachusetts than in Virginia. In the 
march toward modern religious liberalism, those States were most 
laggard in which one church had obtained a marked ascendancy, 
whether it was the Episcopal or Congregational; those were most 
progressive in which no sect could count a majority, or in which, as 
in New York and North Carolina, the Episcopalians had the support 
of the colonial government, but were otherwise so weak that their 
pretensions to special favor must collapse with it. But whether 
conditions were auspicious or inauspicious, religious freedom marched 
steadily on. 

In Massachusetts in 1776 the old Puritan Congregational Church 
was the established church. In every town the support of at least 
one place of worship in that Church was compulsory, and was 
maintained by public taxation of all estates and polls, special excep¬ 
tions under certain conditions being made for Baptists, Quakers, and 
Episcopalians. The ministers were nominated by the church for 
each town or parish, and confirmed by the local political division. 
Those who were communicants of a minor sect which had not yet 
been given the privileges of the Baptists, Episcopalians, or Friends, 
had to support the Establishment. Catholic priests were liable to 
imprisonment for life; and the tithing men could arrest Sabbath 
breakers and hale truants off to church. The commonwealth was 
nothing if not religious. The Abbe Robin says in his “New Travels” 
that Sunday was observed with such strictness that Boston was a 
mere desert, all business being “totally at a stand, and the most 
innocent recreations and pleasures prohibited”; while he tells how 
in 1781 a Frenchman who lodged with him in Boston and indiscreetly 
played his flute on Sunday, was almost mobbed. The first warm 
agitation in favor of religious liberty, after independence, took place 
in the Constitutional Convention of 1780, where it was the chief 
topic of debate. 

Yet the article on religion in the new Constitution seemed at first 


422 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


a step backwards. 1 It was drawn up by Samuel Adams, Caleb 
Strong, and Robert Treat Paine, three devout and narrow Calvinists, 
with the assistance of Timothy Danielson of western Massachusetts, 
and two ministers. Its intention was undoubtedly liberal. It de¬ 
clared that “no subordination of any one sect or denomination to 
another shall ever be established by law”; and its provision that the 
towns should always have “the exclusive right of electing their 
public teachers [ministers] and of contracting with them for their 
support and maintenance,” had in the end such happy results that 
grim Puritans compared it with a cockatrice’s egg. But it in¬ 
structed the Legislature to require the several towns to make suitable 
provision by taxes for the support of religious instruction; and in¬ 
stead of following the old plan of giving members of certain dis¬ 
senting sects an exemption from religious taxation as wide as the 
commonwealth, it simply empowered them to obtain from each 
town a remission of taxes, to be used for the support of their own 
ministers. Town treasurers found it easy to invent pretexts for 
refusing to give these dissenting pastors their share of the moneys 
collected. The inexact phrasing of the article as regarded exempted 
sects also made trouble. The courts, acting upon the general prin¬ 
ciple that all property and polls were liable to taxation for the local 
Congregational church, construed the exemptions so narrowly as to 
cause great hardship. 2 Every denomination that invaded the State 
after 1780, the chief being the Methodists and Universalists, had 
to carry on a long, costly suit to obtain exemption. 3 

The truth is that the article was loosely drawn: it was possible 
for narrow-minded town officers and judges to interpret it narrowly, 
but it was possible for others to interpret it liberally, and as the 
State grew more enlightened in religion, it proved a serviceable 
foundation of freedom. That liberalism was spreading already is 
shown by the fact that the Boston delegates in the Constitutional 

1 For one of the many thoughtful town protests against the article, see that of 
Gorham published in the Boston Gazette, June 12, 1780. “Why, in the name of 
wonder,” Gorham asked, “is a man’s estate to be given to a teacher of the parish, 
where he cannot in conscience attend upon his teaching?” For the early history of the 
movement for greater religious freedom in Massachusetts, see Susan M. Reed, “Church 
and State in Massachusetts, 1691-1740.” 

a Thus, in the Boston Gazette of February 19, 1781, the reformer Isaac Backus com¬ 
plained that a Haverhill gentleman received a certificate of membership in the local 
Baptist church, signed by the minister and three principal members; yet the case 
was turned against them by the court, only for want of the words “belonging 
thereto.” He instanced another defeat of justice by a technicality. See the 
Providence Gazette, March 2, 1782, for the abuse of the Baptists of Attleborough. 

•See Amory’s “Sullivan,” I, 181-86, for an account of the interesting test case 
of the Universalists, brought by an army chaplain. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 423 

Convention were at one time instructed to ask for an alteration, in 
the instrument that would give perfect toleration. 4 But for years, 
criticism of the article and of State legislation was very bitter. The 
Baptists complained that those who wished to change from the 
Congregational to the Baptist or other church had to obtain a 
special license; and that the article limited the resources of small 
congregations to a pittance. In 1800 a law was passed more favor¬ 
able to religious liberty, and in 1811 another, but the Congregation- 
alists still held peculiar privileges. 5 

In New Hampshire the relation of the government to the churches 
when the Revolution began was similar to that in Massachusetts, 
and the Constitution of 1784 was not an iota more progressive than 
the Bay State’s. Governor Benning Wentworth had reserved land, 
in every township he granted, for the support of the Church of 
England; but Episcopalians were few, and next to the Congrega¬ 
tional Church the Presbyterian, introduced by Scotch-Irish immi¬ 
grants from Londonderry, had the most communicants. It was the 
law in 1775 that all should attend church regularly, but it was not 
enforced as it once had been. During the colonial period all citizens 
were required to pay taxes to support the Congregational church 
except the Presbyterians, Quakers, and in late years the Baptists. 
The Constitution of 1784 placed religious affairs in the same posture 
as in Massachusetts. The Legislature was “empowered” to 
“authorize” the towns to lay taxes for the support of ministers, the 
clause as first interpreted being really one which instructed the 
Legislature to compel the towns to lay such taxes. It was made as 
difficult as in Massachusetts for new sects to obtain exemption; for 
dissenting ministers to obtain their due share of taxes; and for con¬ 
verts to transfer their allegiance from Congregationalism. It was 
almost impossible for an agnostic belonging to no sect at all to 
escape religious taxes. The dissenting denominations felt a keen 
discontent, but the progress of reform was even slower than in 
Massachusetts. In both States liberalizing tendencies were stub¬ 
bornly fought by the rural populations, which were dogmatic in 


4 Brissot de Warville wrote from Boston in 1788 (“New Travels, edit. 1792, 100) 
that all sects openly professed their opinions: “The ministers of different sects 
live in such harmony, that they supply each others places when anyone is detained 

fr ° 50 ne S clause’ of the Massachusetts Constitution required officeholders to affirm 
their belief in the Christian religion. It so offended the principles of Joseph Hawley, 
a devout Christian, that he refused to take a seat in the State Senate based on this 
requirement. Journals, Constitutional Convention of 1820, 1st ed., 85. 


424 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


their religious beliefs and fearful that the removal of state support 
from the church would undermine the morals of the land. 6 

But it was in Connecticut that religious intolerance showed its 
•harshest aspect. The land of Jonathan Edwards, the greatest of 
colonial preachers and philosophers; of Benjamin Trumbull, who in 
the sixty years of his New Haven ministry wrote more than 4000 ser¬ 
mons; of Joseph Bellamy, founder of the first Sunday-School in 
America—this land was not one to look with kind eyes upon another 
than its ancient faith. Dissenters were long scarcely tolerated at 
all, though the Baptists obtained a footing in 1705, the Episcopalians 
had by 1750 about twenty-five congregations, and a more diversi¬ 
fied immigration, as the eighteenth century wore on, increased the 
strength of the dissenting sects. All citizens were long compelled 
to attend church regularly, and to pay taxes for the support of the 
Congregational ministry. The history of Connecticut’s emergence 
from her illiberal position is a long and interesting one. The process 
began with the rise of the Episcopalians, Baptist, and other churches; 
it reached its second stage after the “Great Awakening” of 1740-42, 
which produced a schism between the old Established Church and 
the “new light” churches of the Congregationalists; and its third 
stage began soon after the close of the Revolution. Even at the 
third stage Connecticut was very far from true tolerance. 7 

Naturally the Episcopalians, with the advantage of their British 
connection, led the van in the march toward religious freedom. In 
1727 they obtained a law exempting them, if they consistently 
attended an Episcopal church and supported its minister, from taxes 
for the Congregational church; the taxes being taken up by the 
town officials, but turned into the treasury of the local Anglican 
congregation. Two years later the Quakers and Baptists obtained 
the same privilege. It remained impossible, however, for members 
of these sects who lived near no church of their faith to escape the 
taxes laid for the Established Church; and in a number of ways ad¬ 
herents of weak dissenting congregations were discriminated against 
by tyrannous local officials. The schism in the Congregational 
Church following the “Great Awakening” brought about a new 
struggle for toleration. At first the members of the separatist con¬ 
gregations were taxed for the support of the old congregations from 

e See Salem Mercury, March 4, 1788, for the bigotry shown in the New Hampshire 
convention ratifying the Federal Constitution. 

7 Clark’s “Connecticut,” 277; Purcell, “Conn, in Transition,” 92 IT. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 425 

which they had seceded, and were even prosecuted for non-attendance 
there; and in 1745 feeling ran so high in New Haven that a father 
refused to attend the funeral of his separatist son. But the “new 
light” churches began a brave battle. In 1755 twenty congrega¬ 
tions, of a thousand members, formally complained to the Assembly 
that their goods had been distrained to meet assessments for the 
benefit of the Establishment, and that some of them had been im¬ 
prisoned. When their petition for relief brought no answer, they 
sent a committee to protest to the English government. In 1770 
the Legislature granted the separatists formal permission to worship 
in what edifices and congregations they pleased, and exempted the 
estates of their ministers from taxation; but the onerous requirement 
that the laity pay taxes to the Establishment remained. 

A year after the Declaration of Independence the long-pressed 
demand of the “new light” dissenters was granted by the Legislature. 
It exempted “those persons in this State commonly called Separates” 
from taxes for the support of the Establishment, upon condition 
that each of them annually lodge with the clerk of the local estab¬ 
lished church a certificate vouching for his or her attendance upon 
the “new light” services, signed by the minister, elder, or deacon 
of the separatist congregation. When in 1784 the first edition of 
the laws and acts of the State of Connecticut—the State code—was 
published, this right of escaping taxation for the Establishment by 
offering a certificate was confirmed. In addition, all religious bodies 
recognized by law were permitted to manage their temporal affairs 
as freely as did the Establishment, and to sell pews and establish 
funds as they liked. Immigrants into the State, minors, and widows 
were allowed a fair period in which to choose a sect. 8 

Yet all who were not Congregationalists belonging to the Estab¬ 
lishment were still, and with good reason, dissatisfied. It was galling 
to a dissenter’s pride to have to offer a certificate of his church 
allegiance, and narrow-minded town clerks could refuse to recognize 
a certificate when any technicality assisted. Everyone not a member 
of a recognized congregation of dissenters, whether he was irreligious, 
or his sect was too weak to form a local church, was still taxed for 
the Establishment. The Baptists pressed the fight for a fuller 
religious liberty, and they were assisted by other denominations that 
gained in strength. The Episcopalians were hard hit by the Revolu- 

8 For an admirable outline of this progress see M. Louise Greene, “Development 
of Religious Liberty in Connecticut.” 


426 THE AMERICAN STATES 

tion, but recovered fast, and their first American bishop, Samuel 
Seabury, who was consecrated in Great Britain in 1784, took up his 
residence at once in Connecticut. Methodist missionaries entered 
the State in 1789, 9 made converts in spite of fines and imprisonment, 
and were soon able to organize flourishing churches. The irritation 
of these denominations had much to feed upon, for the Congrega- 
tionalists made use of their control over the State government to 
obtain many special privileges. Thus in 1785-86 the Legislature, 
arranging for the sale of the Western Reserve lands, and the division 
of the proceeds among the various Protestant sects, also enacted that 
there should be reserved in each township sold 500 acres for the 
gospel, 500 for the schools, and 240 acres “to be granted in fee 
simple to the first gospel minister who shall settle in such town.” 
The wealthy Congregationalists, carrying out on a large scale the 
planting of missions in the West, naturally received the most benefit. 

Beyond the western boundary of Connecticut we pass into a 
territory of much greater religious freedom, though the Catholic disa¬ 
bilities in the middle Colonies were drastic. In New York the 
Anglican Church enjoyed little beyond a nominal establishment. The 
Dutch and English Calvinists were the most numerous sects, and just 
before the Revolution they and the other dissenting bodies were esti¬ 
mated by a contemporary historian to outnumber the Anglicans 
fifteen to one. “Hence partly arises the general discontent on account 
of the ministry acts; not so much that the provision made by them is 
engrossed by the minor sect as because the body of the people are for 
an equal universal toleration of Protestants, and utterly averse to any 
kind of ecclesiastical establishment.” It was in New York City that 
the Episcopalians were strongest; and there, at the middle of the 
eighteenth century, there were two Episcopalian churches, two Dutch 
Calvinist, two German Lutheran, and one each of the English Cal¬ 
vinist, Baptist, French Huguenot, Moravian, and Quaker sects— 
besides a Jewish synagogue. In such a cosmopolitan Province re¬ 
ligious toleration, like other kinds of toleration, could not help 
flourishing. The Anglican ministers were chosen by their congrega¬ 
tions, and maintained, with a little help from the government, in the 
main by voluntary contributions. At the time of the Revolution, the 
Establishment was limited to four counties, and taxation to support 
it was not onerous—it is hard to find evidence of the collection of 

8 Beardsley, “Life and Corr. of the Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury,” passim. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 427 


tithes; but in 1773 petitions from some Long Island towns protested 
against the favored position of the Anglicans, and a constant election 
cry was “No Bishops.” 

As soon as the allegiance of New York to the Crown was cast 
off, all the old connection between church and state was auto¬ 
matically dissolved. No one knew just how close, in law, this con¬ 
nection had been. In the last years of British rule the Anglicans 
had offered detailed legal arguments to prove that their church was 
upon an establishment as sound and durable as that it occupied in 
England; while the dissenters brought forward equally detailed 
arguments to show that it was not. But everyone knew that the 
connection had not been popularly approved. Formal expression 
was given to the severance in the Constitution of 1777. It declared 
that all such parts of the common or statutory law “as may be con¬ 
structed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of 
Christians or their ministers,” were “abrogated or rejected.” The 
Episcopal Church could make no objection; it was barely able to 
maintain its vitality under the losses it suffered from the persecu¬ 
tion of the loyalists. Thenceforth all faiths in New York were on 
a perfectly equal footing. 

In New Jersey the equality of the different Protestant faiths was 
quite clear, there being no statute for an Establishment. As in 
New York, the dissenters far outnumbered the Episcopalians. 
Samuel Smith, writing from his own knowledge in 1765, tells us there 
were then about 160 churches in the Colony, representing a dozen 
different denominations. About one-third were Presbyterian; one- 
fourth were Dutch Calvinist; about one-fifth were Quaker, and the 
Baptist and Episcopal churches were each less than one-eighth of 
the whole. About 1730 an Episcopalian had admitted, speaking of 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, that there were “such a prodigious 
number of sectaries that the Church of England is like a small 
twig growing under the spreading boughs of a mighty tree. More¬ 
over, the Anglican clergy, as in New York, lived too freely, and 
spent too much money on wine and too little on books, to be much re¬ 
spected. Most dissenting ministers, on the other hand, were active 
and influential, and to the Presbyterians and Dutch Calvinists the 
Province owed most of its educational facilities. The assumption of 
independence confirmed religious freedom, for the Constitution of 
1776 provided that no man should be required to support or attend 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


428 

a church against his will, and that there should be no establishment 
of one sect over another. 10 

In Pennsylvania and Delaware, as in Rhode Island, religious free¬ 
dom was as full and real as anywhere in the wide world; the only 
exception to the universal toleration lying in a sporadic and occa¬ 
sional tendency to deal harshly with Catholics. The Constitutional 
basis of government laid for the two Colonies in 1682 guaranteed 
a wide charity for all forms of belief, and non-interference by the 
government in matters of conscience. The Anglican Church had 
little vitality in the Quaker Colonies; the Calvinist Churches had 
much; and the Province was renowned in the Old World as well as 
new for the variety of its small religious groups, the German immi¬ 
gration alone furnishing a half dozen distinct and eccentric sects. 
The immigration tended slowly but steadily to reduce the dominant 
strength of the Quakers. The Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and many of 
the Welsh supported the Calvinist churches, the Germans maintained 
the Lutheran congregations or the small societies like the Dunkards, 
Mennonites, and Ridge Hermits, and the Baptists and Anabaptists 
were numerous. There were certain religious tests for office, which 
many of these sects strongly supported. The Irish and German 
Catholics, strengthened by the Acadians, formed a small but grow¬ 
ing body by the outbreak of the Revolution. 

But if the state had nothing to with the church in Pennsylvania, 
the church often had much to do with the state. By their numerical 
superiority and great wealth, their energy and intellectual ability, 
the Quakers during most of the eighteenth century previous to the 
Revolution controlled the Assembly. When Provost William Smith 
was rising to prominence as a leader of the “proprietary party,” at 
the beginning of the French and Indian War, he accused the 
Quakers of mismanaging the Colony, and represented the meetings 
of the Quaker Church as political cabals; with the result that the 
Assembly voted his letters libelous, and ordered his arrest. There 
is no doubt that in their votes relating to military preparations 
against the French and Indians, and to relations with England, 
the Quaker Assemblymen were swayed largely by their religious 
convictions. The policy of the government was in many ways a 
Quaker policy, and as such was abominated by the hot Scotch-Irish 
borderers, who were political realists in their dealings with the 

10 Cf Elmer, “Reminiscences of New Jersey,” 33. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 429 

Indians, and by the Episcopalians, who were warmly loyal to Eng¬ 
land. 

In the fifties the revolt against Quaker influence in the govern¬ 
ment became pronounced, in the sixties it began to succeed, and in 
the seventies it completely won its object. The conservative Quakers 
at the beginning of the Revolution were forced out of touch with 
affairs, and the reins passed to men of progressive stamp, some of 
them being Friends, but the great majority belonging to other 
churches. Subject, as conscientious objectors to military service, to 
special assessments, which were often collected in an extortionate 
way, many Quakers complained during the war of independence 
that they were grievously persecuted. 11 

In Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas the Church of England 
enjoyed a recognized supremacy as the state church, its establish¬ 
ment in all four Colonies being explicitly fixed by law. In Maryland 
general taxes were levied in support of the Church, and as its com¬ 
municants were in a minority in the Province, it became much dis¬ 
liked by a large part of the population. Only one fact enabled the 
sects of dissenting Protestants to reconcile themselves to the Estab¬ 
lishment—their dread of the numerous, able, and wealthy Catholics. 
About fifty years before American independence, we find Maryland 
clergy complaining to the Bishop of London of the “vast numbers of 
Jesuits who by their sophistry and cunning make proselytes daily 
throughout the whole government,” and who were grown so impudent 
as to “disperse their Popish books through all quarters of the 
country.” 

Every Anglican clergyman in Maryland had his house and glebe, 
or farm; he was guaranteed a tax, settled by law and collected by 
the sheriffs; and he had various fees, as those for performing mar¬ 
riages. Secure in his emoluments, and, since he was appointed by 
the Proprietary or Governor, virtually free from fear of dismissal, 
the ordinary cleric was no model of virtue. The term “a Maryland 
parson” was a byword farther north. In 1753 Dr. Chandler, a 

11 The sufferings of the “Virginia exiles” were long remembered. Brissot de Warville 
(“New Travels.” 416-17) sympathetically describes the later vexations to which the 
sect was subjected. “Each citizen is obliged by law to serve in the militia, or to pay 
a fine. The Quakers will not serve nor pay the fine. The collector, whose duty it is 
to levy it, enters their houses, takes their furniture, and sells it; and the Quakers 
peacably submit. This method gives great encouragement to knavery. Collectors 
have been known to take goods to the amount of six times the fine, to sell for a 
shilling what was worth a pound, never to return the surplus, nor even to pay the 
State but afterwards to become bankrupts. Their successors would then come and 
demand the fine already paid; but the Quakers have complained of tfiese abuses, 
and an act is passed suspending these collections till September, 1789. 


430 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


frank American minister, wrote home that “the general character 
of the clergy is wretchedly bad,” and that it would “make the ears 
of a sober heathen tingle to hear the stories” told of some of them. 
A contemporary tells us that a current couplet ran: 

^Vho is a minister of the first renown? 

A lettered sot, a drunkard in a gown. 


There was no proper disciplinary authority, and favoritism entered 
into the appointments; so that the majority of the ministers had the 
brains, education, and moral elevation of Parson Trulliber. Yet 
the people were taxed heavily, as taxes went in America, for this 
clerical crew. The quarrel between the Legislature and Governor 
Eden which came to a head in 1770 involved, among other factors, 
the question whether every poll should pay thirty or forty pounds 
of tobacco to the Church, the Governor insisting on the latter 
amount. Since the price of tobacco was high, and they had other 
sources of income, the Maryland clergy were rated the best-paid 
in America. In 1767 one parish was worth about £500 a year. The 
people also had to pay special taxes for church-building, for fencing 
graveyards, and other purposes, and even in wartime beneficed 
clergymen were exempt from the general taxes. “I am as averse to 
having a religion crammed down my throat,” wrote Charles Carroll 
of Carrollton on July 1, 1773, “as to a proclamation”—Governor 
Eden having usurped certain legislative rights by proclamation. The 
burdens under which the Calvinists, Catholics, and Quakers lay were 
one of the real if minor causes of the Revolutionary spirit. 

When the Revolution began, the Anglican Church was destitute 
of influence over the Provincial Congresses; the very vices of the 
clergy, encouraging skepticism and dissent, had assisted in the 
development of a spirit of religious tolerance. The bill of rights 
adopted in 1776 forever ended the Establishment in Maryland. All 
further assessment by vestries for the support of the ministers was 
forbidden, and it was declared that no one should be compelled to 
attend any worship but that of his choice. The Episcopal Church 
was treated generously in that it was secured in all its glebes, 
churches, chapels, and other property, and provision was made for 
continuing the repair of churches in progress under earlier laws. 
Finally, the bill of rights empowered the Legislature at any time to 
levy a common, equal tax for the support of Christianity in general. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 431 


on condition that each person might either pay to his own denomina¬ 
tion, or have the money devoted to the poor. 

It is evidence of the sentiment against any connection between 
church and state in Maryland that but one serious effort was made 
to give effect to this power. After the peace, petitions began to come 
from certain vestries lamenting a decline in piety and morals; and 
the legislature early in 1785 laid a bill providing for a general 
church tax before the people. A huge uproar arose against the 
measure, which was denounced by some as a preliminary step 
towards a new Establishment. Great numbers, it was said, would 
scruple in conscience to pay it; the tax might be raised from four 
shillings to twenty-four. 12 That fall it was decisively beaten. 13 

The struggle for disestablishment in Virginia was as interesting as 
the later one in Connecticut, and much more momentous in its in¬ 
fluence. The Anglican Church at the beginning of Virginia history 
had firmly entrenched itself through the immigration of the Cava¬ 
liers. The leading statesmen—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, 
Mason, Pendleton, the Lees, the Randolphs—of the Revolution were 
of families which had supported the Church ever since their forbears 
had come from the mother land. However, the unquestioned su¬ 
premacy of the Establishment had been somewhat shaken in pre- 
Revolutionary days by two factors: the disrepute into which many 
of the horse-racing, fox-hunting, wine-drinking clergy fell, and the 
fact that the immigration of Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, and 
above all, Baptists, had reduced its communicants to a minority of 
the Colony’s church-members . 14 The newer denominations grew 
especially strong west of the Blue Ridge, and about 1765 their 
moral position was improved by the persecutions to which the Epis¬ 
copalian party tried to subject them. A familiar anecdote tells how 
in 1768, when three Baptist ministers were being tried in Spottsyl- 
vania County, the deep voice of Patrick Henry, who had come for 
miles on horseback, was heard lifted from the rear of the room in 


12 That is, in the hundred pounds. See Maryland Journal, February 4, 8, 18, 1785. 
is A movement in behalf of a bill to establish religious freedom was at once begun 
1 earnest. See Maryland Journal, June 7, 1785- A . . 

* Edmund Randolph draws this striking contrast: ‘‘The Presbyterian clergy were 
idefatigable. Not depending upon the dead letter of written sermons, they under¬ 
ood the mechanism of haranguing, and have often been whetted in dispute on 
digious liberty, as nearly allied to civil. Those of the Church of England were 
[anted on glebes, with comfortable houses, decent salaries, some perquisites, and a 
ecils of rink which was not wholly destitute of unction To him who acquitted 
mself of parochial functions these comforts were secure, whether he ever converted 
deist or softened the heart of a sinner. He never asked himself whether he 
as felt by his audience. To this charge of lukewarmness there were some shining 
icceptions.” M. D. Conway, “Life of Randolph, Ch. 17. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


432 

protest. “May it please your lordships/’ he interrupted, “What 
did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these men, whom 
your worships are about to try for misdemeanor, are charged with 
preaching the gospel of the Son of God?” 

In Virginia, as in Maryland, tithes were levied upon all citizens 
for the support of the Established Church, while the whole public 
was also responsible for the upkeep of the church buildings. The 
salary of ministers had been fixed in 1696 at 16,000 pounds of 
tobacco for each, a stipend largely increased by the legal fees for 
marriages, funerals, and christenings. Like Maryland, Virginia had 
a hot and rather discreditable dispute about salaries just before the 
Revolution—“the parsons’ cause.” Every minister was entitled to 
his parsonage, and his glebe of two hundred acres, and most of them 
cultivated their land like other planters. Shocking stories are told of 
their gambling, profanity, and drunkenness, but the Establishment 
was infinitely stronger in the allegiance of the dominant lowland 
public than in Maryland. 

Towards the close of 1774 the Baptists began to cherish hopes not 
only of obtaining liberty of conscience, but of wholly overturning 
the Establishment, and petitions for this purpose were circulated in¬ 
dustriously. Baptist spokesmen appeared before the Provincial 
Convention of July, 1775, and obtained various minor concessions, 
as that dissenting ministers should be on an equality with the 
Established clergy in the army. A year later, in June, 1776, the 
Declaration of Rights of George Mason was reported, embodying 
the assertion that “all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in 
the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, un¬ 
punished and unrestrained by the magistrates. . . .” This was cast 
aside upon the initiative of Madison, who had been trained in the 
dissenting college at Princeton; and a broader, briefer section was 
substituted, its essential portion reading that “All men are equally 
entitled to the free exercise of religion.” Madison believed that 
the word “toleration” was objectionable, for it implied a system in 
which the free exercise of religion was permissive, instead of an 
unquestioned natural right; and he objected also to a clause in 
Mason’s section which empowered the courts to punish a man when 
in exercising his religion he was found to disturb the peace, happiness, 
or safety of society. The section as finally adopted was a compro¬ 
mise, which declared the persecution of dissenters unjust, but did not 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 433 

rule out the existence of a state church. The reformers hence had 
at once to begin their fight against the laws supporting the Episcopal 
ministry. 

The general battle, which closed victoriously ten years later, began 
with the first session of the Legislature in October, 1776. This 
Assembly received petitions both for and against the Establishment, 
the Baptists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians praying to be relieved 
of any further support of the Episcopal Church, and some 
Methodists, strangely enough, protesting that “very bad conse¬ 
quences” might arise from abolishing the Establishment. The peti¬ 
tions brought on what Jefferson described years later as “the severest 
contests in which I have ever been engaged.” 15 Though most Vir¬ 
ginians were dissenters, a majority of the legislators were Churchmen, 
and it was possible to win ground only at those points where the 
justice of the liberal cause was indisputable. By earnest effort the 
progressives, against the opposition of Pendleton and R. C. Nicholas 
as leaders of the Episcopal party, succeeded in repealing the laws 
which made it criminal to maintain certain proscribed opinions or 
exercise proscribed forms in religion. They also obtained the passage 
of a bill relieving dissenters of the burden of taxes and contributions 
for the Establishment, and they persuaded the Legislature to sus¬ 
pend the ecclesiastical taxes upon even church members for one 
year. These were marked gains, and afforded much encouragement to 
Jefferson, Madison, and Mason. For their part, the conservatives 
carried resolutions declaring that religious assemblies ought to be 
regulated, that provision should be made for continuing the succes¬ 
sion of the clergy and superintending its conduct, and that the ques¬ 
tion of a general tax-levy for all churches should be reserved. 

Thereafter, not a year passed in which the Legislature was not 
bombarded with petitions and memorials upon the abolition of the 
Establishment. Pressing the issue, Jefferson and Madison had little 
trouble in obtaining a suspension from year to year of the ecclesias¬ 
tical tax upon church members. The Baptists and Presbyterians 
were active in marshalling public opinion. Anglicanism had been 
thrown under a cloud by the Revolution, many of the clergy being 
loyalists, and now was the time to strike. In 1779, as part of his 
revised code for Virginia, Jefferson drew up a bill for establishing re¬ 
ligious freedom, which would completely have divorced church and 

« “Writings,” Memorial Ed., I. 57 * 


434 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


government, and it was reported in June, just after he was elected 
Governor. It failed. But there did pass a bill by Mason which 
forever relieved citizens from the payment of taxes for the Episcopal 
Church. The clergy still had their rich glebes, and the greater part 
of all the marriage fees, but they lost their tithes, and became de¬ 
pendent largely upon voluntary contributions. It may seem strange 
that if this measure, which practically ended the Establishment, 
passed, Jefferson’s could not; but this was because his radical pro¬ 
posal seemed irreligious to many, and because a compromise plan 
had found favor with the Presbyterians, and an eloquent advocate 
in Patrick Henry. Briefly, it proposed that the State should es¬ 
tablish all Christian denominations, make them equally state reli¬ 
gions, and support them by regular taxation; it was pressed vigor¬ 
ously in the next few years by many outside as well as inside the 
Episcopal Church. 

Henceforth the “general assessment” was the chief religious ques¬ 
tion before the Legislature. Our available evidence shows that by 
the end of 1783 the plan of taxing everyone for the support of all 
Christian ministers had gained wide favor, and was approved by a 
majority of Episcopalians, Methodists, and perhaps Presbyterians; 
but it was opposed by the Baptists and many in all other denomina¬ 
tions who agreed with Jefferson that any link whatever between 
church and state was an evil. 16 In 1784 the advocates of the plan 
seemed on the eve of victory. On November 17 the Legislature voted 
that incorporation ought to be granted to all Christian churches that 
applied for it; the vote, 62 to 23, showed Madison leading the 
minority, supported by W. C. Nicholas, John Taylor of Caroline, 
and John Breckenridge. Patrick Henry instantly moved to commit 
the Legislature to the general assessment, introducing a resolution 
that “the people of the commonwealth . . . ought to pay a moderate 
tax or contribution for the support of the Christian religion, or of 
some Christian church, or denomination, or communion of Chris¬ 
tians.” It passed 47 to 23, and a committee was appointed under 
Henry to draw up a bill. A number of petitions favorable to it 
came in, including one from the clergy of the whole Presbyterian 
church; while only one memorial was listed against it. A majority 

10 War had brought, it appears, an increase of crime in Virginia, and this was 
attributed by many to a decline in religion. Among those who believed in legislative 
support of all the churches to check this decline were not only Henry and R. H. 
Lee, but Washington and John Marshall. Rives’ “Madison,” I, 602; Rowland’s 
“Mason,” II, 90. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 435 


both of the Legislature and the people appeared to believe that unless 
the obligation to support religion were made unescapable, stinginess 
and indifference would let many churches die; and Henry showed 
with his convincing oratory how nations had declined when religion 
decayed. Madison made an elaborate argument against the bill, 
one of the best of his life, but his opposition seemed in vain. 17 

Yet the measure was beaten. Madison’s twenty-odd followers 
fought it at every step. During the session a bill was reintroduced 
to incorporate the Episcopal Church; a bill which had once been 
objectionable, but was now shorn of harmful features. Madison 
backed it on strategic grounds, writing Jefferson that its rejection 
“would have doubled the eagerness and pretexts for a much greater 
evil— a general assessment—which there is good ground to believe 
was parried by this partial gratification of its warmest votaries.” 18 
The ballot was 47 to 38. But the principal reason for the failure 
of the assessment plan was that Patrick Henry, according to his 
inveterate easy-going practise, rode away near the close of Novem¬ 
ber to his home in the west, leaving it without its most skilful spon¬ 
sor. His retirement was “very inauspicious to his offspring,” re¬ 
joiced Madison; the bill’s “friends are much disheartened by the 
loss of Mr. Henry.” The measure had passed its third reading; but 
now it was proposed that it be postponed, printed, and distributed, 
and the people invited to signify their opinion respecting its adop¬ 
tion at the next session of the Legislature. 19 This seemed reasonable, 
and the proponents of the bill were the more ready to accede to it 
because they believed that the popular reply was certain to be favor¬ 
able. It was at the same time that a similar measure was laid by 
the Episcopalians and others before the people of Maryland, and 
supported by an active campaign. 

With the breaking up of the Legislature, Virginia witnessed a 
campaign of education that most effectively compassed its purpose. 
It was planned, not by Madison, but by George and Wilson Cary 
Nicholas, who believed that while a majority of the counties were 
in favor of the bill, a majority of the people were opposed, and that 
the fact could be shown so conclusively that no legislature would 
have the effrontery to pass the measure. Madison drew up a 


17 C F. James, “Doc. Hist, of Struggle for Rejig, 
of Madison’s speech are given in his “Writings, tl 
ized in Hunt’s “Madison,” 81-83. 
is “Writings,” Hunt. Ed., II, U 3 - 
19 Journal of the House of Delegates. 


Liberty in Va.,” 140. The notes 
unt Ed., II, 88-89; it is summar- 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


43 6 


memorial of remonstrance, at the instance of George Nicholas; 20 it 
was printed as a broadside by the Phoenix Press in Alexandria, and 
copies were sent throughout the State for the reception of signa¬ 
tures; and by September 24, 1785, Edmund Randolph was an¬ 
nouncing to R. H. Lee that “the Presbyterians will have a sufficient 
force to prevent the general assessment, possibly to repeal the act 
of incorporation.” When the Legislature assembled in October, 
Henry had dropped his membership to become Governor, Mason 
and Madison were ready for battle, and the number of signed remon¬ 
strances was enough to bury the assessment bill out of sight. It was 
one of those mischievous measures which carry a plausible face, but 
are easily stripped to their true worthlessness by a penetrating argu¬ 
ment; and this argument Madison had furnished. The measure 
was lost by a small majority in committee of the whole, and re¬ 
linquished forever. 21 

Seeing his favorable opportunity, Madison now brought forward 
Jefferson’s bill for establishing religious freedom, which had lain on 
the table since 1779. He made an able speech, it was adopted in 
the House 67 to 20, and became law in January, 1786. 22 The mea¬ 
sure, which declared that there must be no interference whatever 
by the government in church affairs or matters of conscience, nor 
any disabilities for religious opinion, was truly epoch-making. 
Viewed by large numbers as completely subversive of religious inter¬ 
ests, it proved the cornerstone of religious freedom for many a 
State outside Virginia, and was pointed to abroad as a model of 
advanced legislation on the subject. It was translated into French 
and Italian. Jefferson regarded the law as one of his three greatest 
achievements; after his death the request was found among his 
papers that on his tombstone he be identified as the author of the 
Declaration of Independence, the statute for religious freedom, and 
the University of Virginia. There remained but one vestige of the 
Establishment—the continued Episcopal tenure of the glebes. 23 

It was impossible for the Established Church or any church to 
wax strong in poor, sparsely populated, and isolated North Caro¬ 
lina. William Byrd, in his history of the dividing line, drew a strik- 


*° “Writings,” Hunt Ed., II, 183. 

T T 31 J h ^ T 1081 thorough account of the struggle for religious freedom in Virginia is 
&J-^? cke ? rode ^. Separation of Church and State in Va.”; Bishop Wm. Meade’s 
Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Va.,” is also valuable. 

22 Henmg’s “Statutes at Large,” XII, 84. 

"James, “Doc. Hist, of the Struggles for Religious Liberty in Va.,” 140 ff. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 437 

ing picture of the neglected spiritual condition of the people. Many 
communities paid tribute neither to Caesar nor to God; the chaplain 
with Byrd’s party was clamorously importuned to perform baptisms; 
and in many places marriages were celebrated either by justices of 
the peace or not at all. In 1715 the Province was mapped into nine 
parishes, and the first royal Governor, Burrington, was ordered to 
see that every church had a minister, an endowment, and a glebe. 
Futile efforts were made to legislate vigor into the Establishment. 
In 1757 Governor Dobbs complained to the Assembly that some of 
the parishes systematically evaded the laws compelling them to 
make suitable provision for the minister, and proposed that the 
church rate be levied, not parish by parish, but upon the Province 
as a whole; but the Assembly refused. Not until 1766 could Pres¬ 
byterian ministers perform the marriage ceremony, and even then 
the Episcopal clergyman had to be given the fee; the other dissent¬ 
ing ministers, Quakers excepted, could not perform it until 1776. 
The Schism Act was enforced, to the great detriment of education, 
long after it was forgotten in England. Yet at the outbreak of the 
Revolution there were only six Episcopal ministers in the whole 
Colony. One recent investigator believes that in a half century the 
North Carolinians had hardly paid sufficient taxes to the Establish¬ 
ment to support two clergymen for a year. 24 

While the Anglican Church was at a standstill, the dissenting de¬ 
nominations grew steadily. The immigration into the back counties 
was made up largely of Calvinists, Quakers, and German sects. 
When the Episcopalians had six resident ministers, the Presbyterians 
and Moravians had each as many, while there were a number of 
itinerant dissenting missionaries. In 1765 the Baptists of Virginia 
and North Carolina between the James and Neuse formed the 
Kehukee Association. The Regulators’ troubles which began three 
years later were participated in chiefly by Baptists and Presby¬ 
terians, together with a few Quakers like the fiery Herman Hus¬ 
bands. 

The Anglican Church of North Carolina was wrecked in the Revo¬ 
lution. Most of the ministers remained loyal to the Crown, were 
deprived of their cures, and returned home; and as a majority of 
the communicants were also Tory, the disappearance of the Estab- 

S. B. Weeks. “Church and State in North Carolina,” Johns Hopkins University 
Studies, Series XI, Nos. 5-6. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


438 

lishment meant almost the disappearance of Episcopalianism. The 
Constitution and Bill of Rights adopted by the fifth Provincial Con¬ 
vention in the fall of 1776 ensured perfect religious freedom, pro¬ 
viding that “there shall be no establishment of any one religious 
church or denomination in this State in preference to any other,” 
and that no one should be compelled to attend any church or pay 
for its maintenance. It was a simple matter to bring the laws of 
the State into conformity with these provisions. All ministers alike 
were shortly given the right to perform the marriage ceremony, and 
the existing restrictions upon the Quakers and other sects were re¬ 
moved. The Episcopal churches were generously confirmed in their 
right to their glebes and other property. In one respect the Consti¬ 
tution failed, for at the behest of an able and aggressive back-coun¬ 
try dissenter, the Rev. David Caldwell, it prohibited any person who 
denied the existence of God or the truth of the Protestant religion 
from holding civil office. The discussion of this prohibition, wrote 
the indignant Samuel Johnston to his friend Mrs. Iredell, “blew up 
such a flame” that it almost halted the Convention’s work. 25 The 
liberal-minded Hooper was so angered by the test that he broke off 
abruptly a cherished friendship with its advocate Thomas Jones. 26 

In South Carolina the Episcopal Church was in comparatively 
prosperous circumstances, its condition being the best in America. 
Just before the Revolution there were twenty parishes; the ministers 
were remarkably well educated, talented, and upright; and the rich 
planters and merchants, so English in all their characteristics, had 
every reason to regard the Establishment with pride and devotion. 
The immigration of northern colonials, and of the Scotch-Irish and 
Highlanders from overseas, built up several scores of dissenting 
churches, principally in the upland country. The dissenters were 
not tithed for the Establishment, but were taxed indirectly, since 
some provision was made for the Church from the custom duties. 
They complained of this; they complained that their congregations 
could not hold property as corporations, but only through trustees; 
and they complained that their fashionable members were tempted 
to desert them for the aristocratic Anglican church. Yet there was 
remarkably little ill feeling between the denominations when the 
Revolution began. Nor did the war itself deepen it, for the clergy 

25 McRee’s “Iredell,” I, Ch. 9. 

28 Jones, “Defence of Rev. Hist, of N. Ca.,” 317-18. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 439 


and communicants of the Establishment in South Carolina supported 
the patriot cause almost as loyally as did the Presbyterians and 
Baptists of Charleston and the interior. 27 

Shrewd churchmen doubtless knew that disestablishment would 
come; but it did not come with the suddenness with which it was 
effected in North Carolina. In 1776 the Rev. Mr. William Tennent, 
a Congregationalist from Connecticut, was already agitating the 
question; but the dominant lowland planters, being nearly all church¬ 
men and used to a social and civil fabric of which the Church was 
an integral part, were not ready for the step. The Constitution of 
1776, which discarded the King, did not discard the Establishment. 
The Congregationalists or “White Meetners” kept up their demand 
for it; a memorial drawn up by Tennent received many thousands of 
signatures, especially in the up-country; and when the Assembly 
debated the subject in 1777, Tennent, a member, made a powerful 
plea for disestablishment. The weight of the argument was all with 
him. He was able to show that in the decade preceding 1776 the 
Treasury had paid very nearly £165,000 for the support of the 
Church, and asserted that of this perhaps half had come out of the 
pockets of the dissenters; he could point out that while the Episco¬ 
pal congregations numbered twenty, the dissenting congregations 
numbered seventy-nine. The Episcopalians, he said, should be 
content with their superb churches and parsonages, their numerous 
glebes and other church estates. Let it be a fundamental article of 
the Constitution that no religious sect should be established in pref¬ 
erence to another, he demanded. 

But sentiment was still stronger than reason. It was argued that 
the poor-relief and the management of elections were interwoven 
with the old law for the Establishment, and such influential leaders 
as Lowndes and Charles Pinckney stood bravely by the church. In 
the end it was agreed that the bill for disestablishment should be 
circulated through the State for discussion, preparatory to the next 
session of the Legislature. 28 

The next legislature decided for disestablishment. With the new 
and better Constitution which it adopted early in 1778, the pro¬ 
gressives won the day. This instrument declared that all Protestant 


27 McCradv “S Ca. in the Rev., 1775-1780,” 205-06; but note Ramsay, Hist. 

Mcuraay, . 4 Ep i SCO palians since the Revolution labored under peculiar 

'sadvantages”—the chief of these being the lack of bishops, and the consequent 
ipossibility for a dozen years of ordaining ministers, 
is See Ramsay, II, 17 if., for a contemporary view of these changes. 


440 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


sects, demeaning themselves peaceably and faithfully, should enjoy 
equal religious and civil privileges, and that any church-society 
might be incorporated. The Episcopal churches, however, were 
confirmed by the Constitution in the property they already held. 

Georgia fell in with the whole Southern movement. The Estab¬ 
lished Church there was weak, for it was comparatively young. The 
first permanent missionary had entered upon his duties in 1733; and 
it will be remembered that John Wesley arrived in 1736, labored 
diligently as an Episcopalian, and returned to England in conse¬ 
quence of an unfortunate love affair. Under the royal government 
all dissenters were given complete toleration, and they quite outnum¬ 
bered the Anglicans. A certain Puritan element entered into the 
legislation of the Colony, for all persons were compelled to attend 
church, work and play on Sunday were forbidden, and the con¬ 
stables patrolled the streets, as in New England, to see that the tav¬ 
erns were closed and that all were at service. At the time of the 
Revolution there were only a few Anglican clergymen settled in the 
Province. Several of them took the part of the mother land, and 
Left America; and as their places were not supplied, their denomina¬ 
tion languished. The dissenters took advantage of their opportunity 
to overturn the Establishment. By the Constitution adopted in 
February, 1777, it was declared that all persons should have the 
free exercise of their religion, provided that it was not repugnant 
to the peace and safety of the State—this being the clause in George 
Mason’s proposed article to which Madison objected—and should 
be required to support no teachers except those of their own faith. 

How urgent the necessity for constitutional guarantees of religi¬ 
ous freedom appeared to many people in the young American repub¬ 
lic was shown when the Federal Constitution was given to the 
States for ratification. The lack of any safeguards for liberty of 
faith at once struck critics in all sections. The Virginia Convention 
proposed an amendment guaranteeing freedom of conscience. 
North Carolina’s Convention seconded the proposal, adopting the 
same language. New Hampshire proposed an amendment in dif¬ 
ferent words. New York’s Convention devoted one of sundry 
recommendations and principles to the subject. The dissenting 
minority of the Pennsylvania Convention laid emphasis upon it; and 
Rhode Island in finally ratifying suggested the need for a special 
guarantee. In the first Congress attention was directed to the over- 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 441 

sight by James Madison, and the required guarantee was made the 
first Constitutional amendment proposed to the nation. 29 

II. Primogeniture and Entail Decay 

Only less important than the laws for a Church Establishment, as 
a pillar of aristocracy and privilege, were the laws of primogeniture, 
entail, and manorial interest. As the fight against the Establish¬ 
ment was most prominent in the South, so the fight against these 
undemocratic institutions had chiefly to be waged there. 

In Virginia most of the aristocracy was deeply attached to entail 
and primogeniture. The founders of the great families had obtained 
wide estates, and wishing to ensure the perpetuation of their name 
and influence, had settled them upon their descendants in fee tail. 
Such families, as Jefferson says, “were thus formed into a patrician 
order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their establish¬ 
ments”; from them the King selected the colonial councilors, and 
they were often deeply attached to the Crown. The people so dis¬ 
liked some of them that for a generation after the Revolution it was 
difficult for certain men—a Burwell, a Randolph, or a Carter—to 
carry an election. For this reason, and because entail smacked so 
much of the British land system, Jefferson’s action in attacking it as 
soon as the Revolution began was not so bold as it seemed. It suc¬ 
ceeded with a rapidity, however, which amazed even him. On Oct. 
7, 1776, he took his seat in the House of Delegates; on Oct. 12 he 
obtained leave to bring in a bill to enable tenants in tail to convey 
entailed property in fee simple; and on October 14 he reported a 
measure to do away with the whole scheme of entail by repealing the 
existing law. The Assembly contained many representatives of the 
landed aristocracy, bound by ties with each other and by self-inter¬ 
est to protect the existing order; as matters stood, the great land¬ 
holders were bulwarked against even creditors who wanted the 
entailed land to satisfy debts. Yet the bill passed promptly, as if 
on the flood-tide of democracy. Jefferson tells us that the conserva¬ 
tive Pendleon, “who, taken all in all, was the ablest man in debate 
I ever met with,” fought for the entail system to the last; when he 

28 Elliot’s Debates, II, 118 ff., 148 ff.; IV, 242-44. Philip Schaff’s “Church and 
State in the United States,” 22 ff. should be consulted. It is true, of course, that 
many Americans criticized the Constitution for not recognizing the Christian religion, 
or imposing religious tests for office. 


442 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


found that he could not preserve it, he tried to obtain a compromise, 
but by a few votes he was beaten. 30 

The cognate principle of primogeniture Virginians did not sweep 
away until 1785. When Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton set them¬ 
selves in 1777, under legislative authorization, to revise the State’s 
laws, Jefferson proposed the abolition of the statute of primogeni¬ 
ture, making real estate, like personal property, descendible to the 
next of kin by the statute of distribution. Pendleton wished to pre¬ 
serve it; and when he saw that this was out of the question, sug¬ 
gested that on the Hebrew principle the eldest son should have a 
double share. No, answered Jefferson, not unless he could eat a 
double allowance of food and do a double allowance of work. Jef¬ 
ferson carried his point; and his alteration in the law was taken up 
by the Legislature two years after the final peace, and approved by 
it. The effect of these reforms was succinctly described by Wash¬ 
ington when he told Brissot de Warville at Mount Vernon in 1788 
that “the distinction of classes begins to disappear.” 31 It was 
pictured at greater length years later in Congress by Henry Clay: 

In whose hands now are the once proud seats of Westover, Cerles, May cocks, 
Shirly, and others on the Janies and in lower Virginia? They have passed into 
other and stranger hands. Some of the descendants of illustrious parentage have 
gone to the far West, while others lingering behind have contrasted their present 
condition with that of their venerated ancestors. They behold themselves excluded 
from their fathers’ houses, now in the hands of those who were once their fathers’ 
overseers, or sinking into decay. 32 

The democratic State of Georgia hastened, unconsciously or con¬ 
sciously, to follow the lead of Virginia. The Constitution adopted 
early in 1777 declared that estates should not be entailed, and that 
when a person died without a will, his or her estate should be divided 
equally among the children, the widow taking a child’s share, or her 
dower. In North Carolina the reform was a little tardier. In 1784 
the Assembly, resolving that entails gave wealthy families an undue 
influence in a republic, and were a source of great private injustice, 
made them illegal; and at the same time provided for a more general 
and equal distribution of the real property of persons dying without 
a will. 33 In South Carolina action against entail had been taken 
just before the Revolution, but the old rule of primogeniture re- 

30 “Writings,” Memorial Ed., I, 54, 55. 

81 Washington also spoke of a general improvement in manners. Horse-racing was 
disappearing; so were tavern parties and heavy drinking in homes; while court 
sessions were “no longer the theaters of gambling, inebriation, and blood.” Brissot 
de Warville’s “New Travels,” Ed. 1792, 434. 

32 Cong. Debates, VIII, Part I, 290. 

33 State Records N. C., XXIV, 572-77. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 443 


mained in force until the Federal Government had been well estab¬ 
lished. When the Constitution of 1790 was drawn up, the young 
Governor, Charles Pinckney, suggested a section instructing the 
Legislature to abolish the rights of primogeniture, and it was written 
in. The very next year the Legislature acted upon it. 34 As for 
Maryland, it had passed legislation in colonial days making it possible 
for the heirs of entailed estates to alienate them by a rather difficult 
process, and broader legislation followed in 1783. Three years later, 
moreover, an act was passed abolishing primogeniture. 35 Before the 
end of Washington’s first Administration, therefore, the last vestiges 
of the Colonial imitation of British aristocracy in land inheritance 
had been abolished at the South. 

In New York, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, the 
eldest son had the same rights as in the South; and in New Jersey, 38 
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the four New England States, he took 
a double share of the landed inheritance. By one act after another 
most such rules were swept into oblivion. The New York Legis¬ 
lature of 1786 abolished entails, and divided the realty left by the 
intestate into equal parts among the lawful issue. A year later this 
principle of division was extended to personal property. 37 In Penn¬ 
sylvania, as Franklin once happened to tell a dinner-party at Passy, 
the unreasonableness of giving the eldest son a double portion had 
often been argued. When he was clerk of the Assembly, some mem¬ 
bers proposed that instead the youngest son should get the favored 
treatment, inasmuch as he was the more likely to be left—by his 
father’s death—without an education; but the law was not altered. 
However, such measures now tended to lapse. 38 Massachusetts 
in the spring of 1784 directed that the estates of those who died 
leaving no will should descend equally to the children, save that the 
eldest son should have a double share. 39 

The destruction of the rights of the great Proprietaries, and the 
confiscation of many large estates of Tories for distribution by sale, 
also lent an impulse to democracy. In Maryland the Legislature 


35 S. A. Harrison, “Life of Bozman,” Md. Hist. Society, Fund Pub. No. 26; Laws 
of Md., Maxcy’s Ed., I, 468; II, 16. 

88 New Jersey passed an act in 1784 to do away with the entailment of real estate; 
Acts of Gen. Assembly, 1783-84, PP- 97 , 98. , XT „ 

37 J. C. Hamilton, “Hist, of Rep.,’ Ill, 214; Laws of N. Y., 1777-1801, II, 191. 

38 Franklin’s “Works,’’ Bigelow Ed., VIII, 421. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 

1776 ordered that the Legislature should “regulate entails in such a manner as to 
prevent perpetuities,’’ but this had actually been done by the Colonial Legislature 
long before; cf. Pa. Gazette, October 23, 1776. . 

39 Acts and Laws, 1784, p. 65. Entail is still legal in Massachusetts. 


444 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


of 1780 confiscated the property of all British subjects, save that 
only of ex-Govemor Sharpe. By its law the great landed domains 
of Henry Harford, the Proprietary, were sequestrated to the State; 
the quit-rents being afterwards abolished, and not taken by the 
State, the original freeholds became the unrestricted property of 
those in whose hands they lay. Harford later received £10,000 
from the State when it cleared up its business dealings with the Bank 
of England, and he was paid £90,000 indemnity by the British 
Treasury. Pennsylvania similarly took over the holdings of the 
Penns, and abolished the quit-rents; and it granted the family, “in 
remembrance of the enterprising spirit of the founder,” £130,000. 
Virginia did away with quit-rents in the fall of 1777. 

In New York the lordships and manorial privileges of the great 
estate-holders or patroons were relegated to oblivion. Before the 
Revolution Stephen Van Rensselaer, had he been of age, would have 
been acknowledged by the English as the sixth lord of the manor of 
Rensselaer, and by the Dutch as the eighth patroon. Now he was 
simply Mr. Van Rensselaer, though by courtesy he was always called 
patroon. 40 The abolition of manorial privileges, however, made no 
difference in the terms of the leases governing the rented lands, 
and they were often, as on Livingston Manor, oppressive in their 
terms. A real gain for social and political equality, nevertheless, 
resulted from the sale of wide tracts of land confiscated from aristo¬ 
cratic families like the De Lanceys, Skeenes, Jessups, Beverly Rob¬ 
inson, and John T. Kempe. James De Lancey’s lands went to about 
275 different persons; Roger Morris’s 50,000 acres in Putnam County 
to nearly 250; and the tracts in the central and northern parts of 
the State were divided into farms of 100 to 500 acres and sold to 
poor tillers. 41 

In all parts of the country the Revolution meant the emergence 
of men from obscure and poor social ranks into positions of power. 
We think of this as natural enough in South Carolina and Virginia, 
where a heavy crust of aristocracy was shattered by the upheaval. 
But it was true even in such a comparatively democratic State as 
Massachusetts. Many of the best families of Boston and Cambridge 

40 B. W. Bond, “State Govt, in Md. 1777-81,” 15; Browne’s Md., 285; Laws of Md. t 
Maxcy’s Ed., I, 391; Hening, IX, 359; G. W. Schuyler, “Colonial New York,” I, 
227-31. In New York there was left one bit of property which even yet is held in 
entail by the direct descendants of the grantee—Gardiner’s Island, at the tip of Long 
Island. 

41 Van Tyne, “Loyalists,” 279-80; see B. W. Bond, “The Quit-Rent System.” 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 445 

were Tory—even one of the Quincys was so—and were compelled 
to remove, leaving their estates behind. New men came in to buy 
their property at a bargain, and take their places in commerce and 
the professions; and many of them came from the country squirearchy 
and small town gentry. Among these country migrants to Boston 
were the Adamses and Fisher Ames from Norfolk County; the 
Prescotts from Middlesex; and from Essex the Cabots, Lowells, 
Parsonses, Lees, Jacksons, Pickerings, and Elbridge Gerry. They 
took and long held an ascendancy in Massachusetts politics. 42 

III. Attacks Upon Slavery 

The separation of the Colonies from Great Britain made possible 
the first concerted and effective attacks upon slavery in them. The 
official attitude of the British Government toward slavery and the 
slave trade had not been as liberal as that prevalent even in many 
parts of the South. The Crown, for example, had in 1769 vetoed 
the measure by which the Virginia Assembly sought to make the 
further importation of slaves illegal. In Massachusetts efforts in 
1771 and 1774 to abolish the slave trade, strongly supported by 
Puritan opinion, had been defeated by the royal authorities. 43 
Similar attempts in New Jersey and Delaware just before the Revo¬ 
lution failed in the same way. Only in the self-governing Colonies 
of Rhode Island and Connecticut, and in Pennsylvania, which laid 
a prohibitive duty, was the importation of slaves halted. 44 By the 
Treaty of Utrecht in 1714 England had agreed to furnish the Span¬ 
ish Colonies with negroes for thirty years; and a trade had been 
built up the perpetuation of which was valuable to powerful British 
interests, like the Royal African Company. Many liberal English¬ 
men, of course, reprobated the slave trade emphatically—Burke 
called slavery itself a permanent curse upon the New World; but 
the British Government merited the denunciation which Jefferson 
included in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence. George 
III, he declared, had “waged cruel war against liberty itself, violating 
its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant 
population [Africans] who never offended him, capturing and car¬ 
rying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable 

° Lodge, “Boston,” 167-68. 

48 Wilson, “Rise and Fall of Slave Power,” I, 3 ff. 

44 Mary S. Locke, “Anti-Slavery in America,” 71. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


446 


death in the transportation thither.” This he struck out because 
South Carolina and Georgia wished the slave trade maintained, and 
many Northern citizens had engaged in it. 

British America in 1776 had about a half million negroes, nearly 
all of whom were slaves. In New England, Pennsylvania, and New 
Jersey, slaves were seldom met, and their ordinary treatment did not 
differ greatly from that accorded to white laborers or indentured 
servants. In New York the negroes were numerous, and were much 
more harshly treated; their position was more degraded, and they 
were felt to be a potential menace. It is probably a fact that for a 
long period in the eighteenth century the New Yorkers showed more 
fear of their slaves and more brutality to them than the South Caro¬ 
linians, but this was not true by the time of the Revolution. 45 In 
the great slaveholding communities of the lowland South the negroes 
were ignorant, dirty, and heathenish; they were subject to the most 
repressive measures, enacted by legislators who dreaded nothing so 
much as a servile insurrection; and they were always carelessly and 
often cruelly used. Nevertheless, all the infant States except the 
two southernmost were in the main opposed to the slave trade, and 
in all there were men who believed in early abolition. 46 

In their new freedom the States first and most decisively dealt 
with the importation of negroes. The Quaker movement against 
slavery in the Middle Colonies had long been strong, John Woolman 
and others of talent having labored devotedly in it; and Delaware 
was the first to take action. Her Constitution of 1776 forbade the 
importation of slaves for either sale or labor. In Virginia Jefferson 
brought in a bill in 1778 to cut off the slave trade, which passed 
without opposition. Almost all educated men in the Old Dominion 
believed, as they had repeatedly protested to the Crown authorities, 
that the trade was one of great inhumanity, and gravely injurious 
to their well-being, since it discouraged the settlement of more 
useful inhabitants. The Pennsylvania Legislature followed suit in 
1780; that of Maryland did so in 1783; and the New Hampshire 
Constitution of the latter year stopped all importation of slaves. 
Connecticut and Rhode Island renewed their laws against importa¬ 
tion in 1784, and New York passed one in 1785. By this time 


.“ Doyle, “English Colonies in America,” V, Ch. 6 , deals admirably with the colo¬ 
nists in relation to the inferior races. 

46 As an example of the constant agitation over slavery, note the publication in 
the Pa. Mercury, May 13-20, 1788, of the “Thoughts Upon the African Slave 
Trade written by John Newton, the poet Cowper’s friend. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 447 


petitions were pouring in upon the New Jersey Legislature, and 
in response the State first, in 1786, imposed a heavy fine for bringing 
in a slave—£50 if the negro had come from Africa since 1776, £20 
if before 47 —and in 1788 made the law much more severe, while also 
forbidding the exportation of any slave resident for a year or more 
in the State, except with his own or his parents’ consent. 48 In North 
Carolina the slave trade was discouraged in 1786 by a tax of £5 a 
head. In South Carolina the able and energetic Edward Rutledge, 
who had been foremost in the abolition of primogeniture, opposed it; 
in 1785 he championed an unsuccessful proposal to have the impor¬ 
tation of negroes forbidden for three years, 49 and in 1787 and 1788 
acts for a temporary prohibition actually passed. 

Thus within little m6re than a decade after the Declaration of 
Independence, a wave of State legislation against the importation 
of negroes swept the Union, prohibiting the traffic everywhere except 
in South Carolina and Georgia, and temporarily stopping it even 
in South Carolina. In a number of States negroes were automatically 
made free when imported. Rhode Island, where the owners of slave- 
ships had been numerous, in 1787 made participation in the slave 
trade between even Africa and the West Indies punishable by a 
heavy fine. 

The emancipation of slaves was much more difficult to effect, yet 
the movement made steady headway at the North. A popular re¬ 
pugnance to slavery had always been marked in the Congregational 
as well as the Quaker Colonies. The “Body of Liberties” or code 
of Massachusetts Bay in 1641, for example, had declared that there 
should never be any slavery except of captives taken in just war, or 
of those who were willingly sold. Rhode Island in 1652 enacted 
that “no black mankind or white” should serve in slavery for more 
than ten years, or after the age of twenty-four this being the most 
humane legislation regarding slavery put into effect in the seven¬ 
teenth century in any part of the world. The Revolution was a 
struggle for human freedom, and the slowest intelligence was aware 
of the gap between slavery and the ideals professed by the rebelli¬ 
ous colonists. Many blacks who fought in the Revolution were 
thought thereby to have earned their freedom. Massachusetts 
granted some slaves who enlisted for three years their liberty; 

«H ee S N cIoley? C “Sla^?y C i‘n V??’* John? Hopkins University Studies, Series 14, 
N °*Rutledge was beaten 6 S to 48; cf. Pa. Mercury , December 16, 1785. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


448 

Rhode Island raised a regiment of negroes under Colonel Christo¬ 
pher Greene, and Connecticut a company under Col. David Hum¬ 
phreys. In the South, Colonel John Laurens labored to have suitable 
slaves emancipated and enrolled in the army, and Virginia in the 
year of peace freed all negroes who had served honorably. 

Vermont, not a member of the Union, led the van; for she adopted 
a Constitution in 1777 which declared against slavery forever. She 
was quickly followed by Massachusetts. In that State, a bill to 
forbid slavery had been reported by a committee in 1777, and had 
been allowed to die following an unsuccessful attempt to learn from 
Congress whether it would have a tendency to injure the Union. 
However, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of 1780, declaring all 
men born free and equal, and endowed with the inalienable right of 
enjoying their lives and liberties, effected the desired object. The 
Supreme Court, passing upon cases argued in behalf of the slaves 
by men of such note as Levi Lincoln, Caleb Strong, and Theodore 
Sedgwick, construed this declaration to require the total manumis¬ 
sion of negroes previously held in bondage. The New Hampshire 
Constitution of 1784 contained in its Bill of Rights a statement of 
the same purport, which also was held to set all slaves free. 50 These 
three States constituted the only free soil of the country at the time 
the Federal Constitution was adopted. 

However, other Northern States during these years began making 
themselves free soil by a process of gradual emancipation. In 1780 
the Pennsylvania Legislature passed the first act for this purpose, 
reflecting the deep dislike of slavery felt by not only the Friends 
but the Mennonites and other sects. Much of the credit for it is 
due to George Bryan, 51 and an indefatigable abolitionist, Anthony 
Benezet, is said to have interviewed every member of the Legisla¬ 
ture. In the same year a measure for gradual abolition passed the 
Connecticut House, was continued till the next session, and was 
then set aside; but it became law in an improved form in 1784. 52 
Under it no negro or mulatto born after March 1, 1784, could be 
held as a slave after reaching the age of twenty-five. Rhode Island 
in the same year passed a similar law. New York and New Jersey 

80 C f * ^ass. Hist - Soc - Colls., Series V, Vol. 3, 375 ff., letters to Jeremy Belknap 
on New England slavery in 1788. 

61 Papers of the Pa. Governors, III, 675 ff.; Pennsylvania had an abolition society, 
founded in 1774, of which in 1787 Franklin was president, and Dr. Rush and 
Tench Coxe were secretaries. The act is in Laws of Pennsylvania, 1810 Ed., Ch. 870. 

" B. C. Steiner, “Slavery in Conn.,” Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series 
XI, Nos. 9, 10. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 449 


took no such action until some years after the Federal Constitution 
went into effect. The former State, however, had an active Society 
for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, 53 of which in 1787 Jay 
was president, and Egbert Benson and Melancthon Smith were 
prominent members. In Maryland an energetic movement was on 
foot in 1788 for piecemeal abolition. “Othello” argued in the Mary¬ 
land Journal that slavery “is inconsistent with the declared prin¬ 
ciples of the American Revolution,” and that either the Americans 
should at once free all their slaves and colonize them in the West, or 
arrange for their gradual liberation, “so that it may become a known 
and fixed point, that idtimately f universal liberty, in these United 
States, shall triumph. . . .” This plea he reinforced by a picture of 
the miseries and cruelties of slavery in parts of the South. Neverthe¬ 
less, in 1789 a bill to encourage manumission, eloquently supported 
by William Pinkney, was defeated by a close margin in the House. 54 

At the South only a minority wished with Washington for some 
plan by which slavery could be abolished by law, though the 
minority included in Virginia such men as Jefferson, R. H. Lee, 
Henry, and Madison. The economic development of this section 
bound greater and greater interests up with slavery. Several South¬ 
ern States repealed the Colonial statutes which forbade emancipation 
except for meritorious service, and considerable numbers of liberal- 
minded gentlemen made their slaves free. But Washington wrote 
Lafayette in 1785 that petitions for the abolition of slavery pre¬ 
sented to the Virginia Legislature could scarcely obtain a hearing, 
and within a decade after the removal of the old restraints upon 
manumission, in Virginia they were again imposed. 55 In the Caro- 
linas and Georgia opposition to all abolitionist doctrines was intense, 
for if the negroes were profitable on the Virginia tobacco planta¬ 
tions, they were indispensable on the rice and indigo areas farther 
south; while the half-savage, sullen blacks of many districts could 
not be freed with' safety to the whites. 56 A few months before 


m In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1 777 Gouverneur Morris, sup¬ 
ported by Jay, labored vainly in behalf of an article calling upon future Legislatures 
to abolish domestic slavery as soon as possible. Sparks, Morris, I, 125. See N. Y. 
Packet Aoril 14, 1785, for the continuance of the agitation. 

m It’waf difficult to protect manumitted blacks in their liberty. See the Charleston, 
S C City Gazette, September 26, 1789, for a report of the kidnaping of free negroes 
by a gang which sold them farther south. Pinckney’s noble speech in the Maryland 

H « U W W W. r f^? d ‘‘HeS^^n. f0 3 o”'-o 4 . shows Gov. Henry intervening to save a 
free black woman and her child from being reduced to slavery again. Manumission 
was authorized in 1782; Hening, XI, 39 if* . ,. . . . 

««John Laurens spoke of the hopelessness of crusading against slavery in the 
lower South; Wallace’s “Laurens,” 474 - 75 * Elkanah Watson, traveling in the South 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


450 

Washington was inaugurated a negro near Charleston was sentenced 
to be burned to death for murdering his master, and the sentence 
was executed in the presence of his fellow-bondsmen. An ordinance 
of South Carolina for regulating the conduct of slaves and free 
negroes in Charleston, passed in 1789, indicates the apprehensions 
that were never lulled there. Not more than seven male slaves were 
ever to be allowed to assemble together, except for a funeral; no 
negro gathering was to last later than ten at night in summer, and 
nine in winter; no negro could on his own account buy, sell, or 
barter, licensed fishermen excepted; and no negro was to engage 
in any mechanic or handicraft trade for himself. In 1786 and 
again in 1787 the Georgia militia and minute-men waged petty wars 
against camps of desperate refugee slaves in the wilderness, dis¬ 
lodging them from their lairs on the Savannah with grape-shot. 57 

But this Southern opposition to the progress of emancipation only 
threw Northern approval into greater prominence. Immediately 
after the Revolution the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was re¬ 
vived, and its work inspired the formation of similar bodies in other 
States, the first national convention being held in 1794. 

The debate upon the slave trade in the Constitutional Convention 
showed how widespread an hostility to it had developed. The 
majority sentiment was of a kind to justify Lincoln’s fundamental 
contention of many decades later, that the fathers of the republic 
had designed to place slavery in the path to ultimate extinction. 
We can note only that the discussion showed a cleavage between the 
various Southern States on the question, and a lesser cleavage be¬ 
tween Northerners; there was no hard and fast sectional division 
as yet. Luther Martin, of Maryland, argued for suppressing the 
slave trade as “inconsistent to the principles of the Revolution and 
dishonorable to the American character.” Charles Pinckney, on 
the other side, was positive that South Carolina would not accept 
the Constitution if it prohibited the slave trade, although he ad¬ 
mitted that his State might “by degrees, do of herself what . . . 
Virginia and Maryland have already done.” 58 Mason, of Virginia, 
spared no adjectives in assailing “this infernal traffic” and its evil 

fn 1777, recorded his horror and disgust at certain scenes of slavery; in his 
“Memoirs,” Ch. 3, he describes “a heart-rending spectacle; the sale of a negro 
family, under the sheriff’s hammer.” 

67 New York Advertiser , May 23, 1787; N. Y. Packet, May 25, 1787; Freeman’s 
Journal (Phila.), November 15, 1786. 

58 Elliot’s “Debates,” V, 456 ff. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 45 1 

effects—the discouragement of arts and manufactures, the degrada¬ 
tion of labor, the prevention of the immigration of a needed white 
population, the creation of an aristocracy with arbitrary manners— 
and observed that although the upper South forbade the importa¬ 
tion of slaves, all this would be in vain so long as Georgia and 
South Carolina imported them unchecked. Baldwin, of Georgia, 
was emphatic in regarding the importation of slaves as a local, not 
a national, matter; “Georgia was decided on this point. ... If left 
to herself she may probably put a stop to this evil.” Rutledge of 
South Carolina also insisted on the right of importation. 

Of the Northern delegates, Gouvemeur Morris vied with Mason 
in denouncing both slavery—“a nefarious institution,” “the curse 
of heaven on the States where it prevailed”—and the trade which 
fed it. Like others, he regarded the counting of a certain proportion 
of the slaves in apportioning Federal representation as an incentive 
to importation. But Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth were for 
leaving importation to the States. The former did not regard the 
admission of negroes as open to “such insuperable objections”; the 
latter felt sure that abolition was making steady headway, and that 
“the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees 
complete it.” Gerry, of Massachusetts, concurred. It will be ob¬ 
served that the strongest opposition to the slave trade came from 
Maryland and Virginia—and there were not lacking men to point 
out that these were the chief slave-breeding States; and that while 
the strongest defence came from the three Southernmost States, 
several New England delegates were quite willing to see the States 
allowed to prohibit or permit the trade as they liked. But it should 
also be noted that Pinckney and Baldwin, of the two States most 
attached to the importation of blacks, believed that public sentiment 
there might soon put an end to it. The compromise that resulted 
is well known. The importation of slaves was not to be forbidden 
by Congress prior to 1808, but a small tax was to be allowed. 

IV. Penal Codes and Prisons 

While passing legislation for more humane treatment of the black 
race, the Legislatures did not forget an increased humanity toward 
erring freemen. The cruelty of the criminal law throughout British 
America in 1775 was a direct reflection of the cruelty of the English 


452 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


penal code. In her system of justice the mother country was, in 
some respects, far in advance of most parts of Continental Europe. 
But just as little distinction of punishment was made by law be¬ 
tween him who broke a pane to steal a loaf and him who murdered to 
get a purse, between a poacher and a parricide, as in some of the 
darkest Continental lands. In Blackstone’s time the number of 
crimes punishable with death was no less than one hundred and sixty, 
and this long list was later increased. In practise, this severity was 
mitigated by rigid insistence upon a close technical adherence to 
the rules of correct pleading and proof, and acquittal when there 
was any error in prosecution; by the rule as to benefit of clergy; 
by the disposition of juries to acquit criminals threatened with un¬ 
due punishment; and by the pardoning power of the Crown. Never¬ 
theless, about the time of the Revolution a poor London girl in her 
teens, the mother of two babies, whose husband had been impressed 
into the navy and who in consequence was thrown into the streets, 
was executed for stealing a bit of linen to put bread into her chil¬ 
dren’s mouths. 59 During the Revolution efforts at reform were made 
in England, and soon after it Jeremy Bentham riddled the Dra¬ 
conian laws through and through, showing that in the repression 
of crime a sure punishment was more effective than a severe one. 

The Colonies adopted in general the civil and criminal laws of 
the parent nation, having as little disposition as liberty to do other¬ 
wise. In some Provinces, to be sure, the spirit of freedom which 
animated the settlers or founders produced changes. William Penn 
drew up for Pennsylvania, in advance of its actual settlement, a body 
of concessions which was the foundation of a criminal code of great 
liberality. None might be deprived of life, liberty, or estate except 
by a jury of twelve; the right of challenging jurors was secured to 
the utmost; imprisonment for debt was hedged about by careful 
safeguards; and theft, by an adaptation of Mosaic law, was to be 
punished by a two-fold restitution. Assent to the Colony’s equit¬ 
able foundation-code was refused by the Crown, but it was never¬ 
theless kept in force by the colonial Legislature for thirty-five years. 
In the end the Colony exchanged its penal laws for those which 
obtained in the mother land, though the predilection towards a more 
humane system persisted and was easily revived after 1776. Georgia 
and North Carolina were for a long time safe refuges for insolvent 

59 Marks, “England and America,” 1763-83, Ch. 55. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 453 

debtors, though before the Revolution their laws, like those of other 
Royal Provinces, had been brought into harmony with Great Brit¬ 
ain’s; and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) had humane 
features. 

Taking the United States as a whole, its penal codes in 1776 pre¬ 
sented a sorry spectacle. In New York, for example, then and for 
two full decades later, sixteen crimes were punishable by death on 
the first offence—among them robbery, burglary, house-breaking, 
arson, and forgery; and as many felonies were punishable with 
death on the second offence. In Delaware any of twenty crimes 
might cost a man his life. Jefferson gives a good account of the 
specific instances in which the criminal law of Virginia differed 
from England’s in his “Notes on Virginia”; but these variations 
concerned only debtors, the care of the poor, the treatment of slaves, 
marriages, and minor matters. 60 The laws of Connecticut still made 
fifteen crimes punishable with death, though in part these laws were 
now dead letters. Rhode Island was entitled to claim the fairest 
record. By her early laws the crimes of treason, murder, manslaugh¬ 
ter, burglary, robbery, witchcraft, rape, and offences against nature 
were all subject to capital punishment, but arson was removed from 
this list; burglary was always treated leniently when committed by 
a minor or a person made desperate by want, and no execution for 
it occurred after 1766; and in 1768 witchcraft was formally dropped 
from the roster of capital offences. 61 

In the reform of the criminal code, as in so many other fields, 
Virginia led the way. When Jefferson left Congress in 1776 to sit 
in the Virginia Assembly he felt persuaded, he said later, that the 
code must be adapted to a republican form of government, and 
everywhere corrected “with a single eye to reason and the good of 
those for whose government it was framed.” In the autumn its 
revision was authorized, and he, Pendleton, Wythe, George Mason, 
and Thomas L. Lee were appointed to execute the task. Mason and 
Lee, avowing their lack of legal knowledge, resigned, and in the divi¬ 
sion of the task Jefferson assumed that portion relating to the crim¬ 
inal law. It was agreed by him and his associates that the punish¬ 
ment of death should be abolished except for treason and murder, 
and that for other felonies the penalty should be hard labor on the 



454 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


public works, and, in some instances, application of the lex talionis. 
“How this last revolting principle came to obtain our approbation,” 
he says, “I do not remember.” The revised criminal code was laid 
by till the end of the war. Brought up in 1785 by Madison, who 
was laboring with general success to have the other revisions of the 
State laws approved, it was defeated in the House by a majority of 
one—this because of the prevailing rage against horse-thieves. For¬ 
tunately, Governor Patrick Henry this year refused to allow men 
guilty of no extreme crime to be executed, and pardoned them upon 
the understanding that the mayor of Richmond would provide against 
their escape while they were kept at hard labor. 62 But in 1788 men 
were hanged in Richmond for mere robbery. 63 It was not until 
Jefferson by his own exertions in 1796 carried his penal revision 
that the State was safe against these barbarities. 

Though the movement for ameliorating the criminal code was 
begun later in Pennsylvania, it succeeded earlier. The Constitution 
of 1776 commanded a revision. Just a decade later the legislators 
abolished the death penalty for robbery, burglary, and unnatural 
crimes, and lightened the penalty for certain offences not capital 
before. 64 This act was regarded as an experiment, and next year 
there were Assemblymen who swore that it had caused the greatest 
dissatisfaction among the people, and an immense increase of rogues 
and vagabonds. 65 Nevertheless, the humane principles of the inno¬ 
vation were preserved and broadened in acts of 1790 and 1791. 
Finally, in 1794 an entire revolution was effected in the criminal 
code, and death was reserved for the punishment of deliberate homi¬ 
cide. This sweeping reform was of powerful influence all over the 


63 Rives’s “Madison,” II, 155-56. The old punishment for horse-thievery was 

death. Jefferson proposed three years’ hard labor, with pecuniary reparation. There 
was a great increase in horse-stealing all over America during the confusion of the 
war. In Pennsylvania a movement to make the crime punishable by death was 

defeated only by Judge Bryan. In New Jersey this punishment was actually pro¬ 
vided, and thenceforth New Jersey had more horse-thieves than Pennsylvania. Wm. 
Bradford, “An Inquiry How Far the Punishment of Death is Necessary,” 1793. 
In South Carolina, a Revolutionary veteran writes, after the war “highway robbery 
was a common occurrence, and horse-stealing so frequent that the Legislature made 
it a crime punishable with death, in order to protect the poor farmer who, at the 

very season for ploughing his crops, might be reduced to the want of food by his 

only horse having been stolen from him.” Joseph Johnson, “Traditions and 
Reminiscences,” 400. By a law of 1780 Pennsylvania did go so far as to prescribe that 
on the second offence horse-thieves should be branded H T on the forehead. Laws, 
1810 Ed., Ch. 579. 

63 Pennsylvania Packet, June 19, 1788. One was “Edward Watkins, from Caroline, 
for breaking into and robbing the dwelling house of Mr. Sutton of sundry wearing 
apparel”; the other was one William Armstrong who had entered a country store. 

64 R. Vaux, “Sketch of the Origin and History of the State Penitentiary of Pa.,” 8. 

65 Pa. Packet, November 10, 1787. Since eighteen crimes had been nominally pun¬ 
ishable with death on the first offence, there was still room for reform. But the 
barbarous old punishments of branding, ear-cropping, ear-nailing, and heavy flogging 
were abolished. Laws, 1810 Ed., Ch. 236, Ch. 1231. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 455 

Union. The man chiefly responsible for it was William Bradford, 
a careful student of liberal writings on the subject by British and 
Continental authors. He was ably seconded by Dr. Benjamin 
Rush 66 and Judge Bryan. How much the reform was needed will 
appear from the fact that in the years 1779-1789 inclusive, twenty- 
six persons were put to death in Pennsylvania, the land of Quaker 
moderation, for burglary; twenty-three for robbery; four for rape; 
and one each for counterfeiting, arson, and a crime against nature. 
This was in spite of the frequency of pardons for those convicted. 
Bradford tells us that soon after the amendment of the laws, two 
men were convicted of robbery and burglary respectively, and were 
told that they could accept the new punishment in place of the old 
death penalty; they refused, hoping for a pardon, which one re¬ 
ceived, while the other poor fellow was executed. 67 

Maryland’s record unfortunately stands for that of most States in 
this matter. A proposal in 1778 by the House for a complete revi¬ 
sion of the criminal law failed, the Senate being willing only to 
investigate the question; and in the heat of the war the subject was 
then forgotten. Even in New England it took time for enlightened 
ideas to gain ground, and there was one notable instance of reaction. 
Massachusetts in 1785 passed a series of harsh criminal laws. Rob¬ 
bery, rape, burglary, and sodomy were punished by death, arson by 
life imprisonment, and manslaughter by prison and branding. 

If little was actually accomplished in reforming the penal law 
in other States, everywhere discontent was being expressed. Edu¬ 
cated Americans were as well aware of the efforts of Beccaria to 
improve the condition of the criminal laws in Europe as they later 
were of the efforts of Howard to remodel the prisons of that con¬ 
tinent. We know from Jefferson’s autobiography that he was early 
familiar with Beccaria, who had an English translator in 1768; be¬ 
fore the Revolution Charles Carroll of Carrollton ordered his book 
from abroad; and it was used as basis for newspaper articles ardently 
demanding that the United States make itself a model for the Old 
World by requiring blood only for blood. It is noteworthy, how- 

86 See Dr Rush’s fine argument against public punishments, American Museum, II, 
JSi ff. (August 1787); and his argument against capital punishments, Amer. Museum, 
IV 7*8 ff. (Juiy, 1788)—equally forcible and well written. 

«Wm Bradford, “An Inquiry How Far the Punishment of Death is Necessary 
The total number convicted of robbery was 93; of burglary, 100; Cf John R. 
Tyson “Annual Discourse Before the Hist. Soc. of Pa., 1831. It should here be 
noted that soon after the penal code of Pennsylvania was reformed a movement 
began in that State to reform the civil code. The subject at Albert Gallatin 3 
recommendation, was referred to a commission headed by Judge James Wilson, 
Wilson being an aged man, it did nothing. Adams s (jallatin, 84 tt. 


456 THE AMERICAN STATES 

ever, that when in 1790 the Federal Government passed an act for 
punishing crimes against the United States, it fixed the death pen¬ 
alty, after heated discussion, for the forgery of the securities of 
the nation. 68 

“In England,” wrote Voltaire, “if a poor fellow cannot readily 
pay a little money when his hands are at liberty, the better to en¬ 
able him to do it, they load him with handcuffs.” So they did in 
the United States. Much progress was made before 1789 in the 
reform of the laws upon imprisonment for debt, but much was left 
for later decades. New York before this date had passed an act by 
which any debtor, who should get creditors representing three- 
fourths of his debts to petition for his release, might be freed after 
he had surrendered all his property; but this was only a partial 
advance. Pennsylvania legislated for the relief of debtors at the 
same time, and Massachusetts in 1787 came to the rescue of debt¬ 
ors who could not support themselves in jail. 69 

When the Assembly rose in New York city in 1787, Lansing 
asked for the attention of the members while he read a list of the 
prisoners confined for debt hard by. There were ten men whose 
debts collectively reached £24, he said, languishing without hope of 
release; and at his suggestion the members unanimously made a gift 
of one day’s pay to relieve them. 70 We have it on good evidence 
that at this time there was one worthy prisoner, among two dozen 

68 The newspapers of the time abound in revolting reports of the administration of 
harsh State laws. In Philadelphia in 1783 five men were about to be put to death 
for one robbery, and the press commented on the fact that the sole plea for 
mercy came from the widowed and destitute mother of one. Two veterans of 
Burgoyne’s army, men in want, committed a robbery without violence and were exe¬ 
cuted for it in 1784 in Cambridge, Mass. In Essex County, N. J., in 1786, people were 
horrified that a young man sentenced to hang for burglary showed bravado, not 
contrition. In Maryland in the summer of 1786 two men were put to death for 
burglary and two more for horse-thieving. In the summer of 1785 the whole 
country was interested in the execution of a man in Philadelphia for assaulting a 
servant girl. In the fall of 1787 two men, one protesting innocence, were executed 
for counterfeiting in Charleston. Some of the lesser sentences are only less horrify¬ 
ing. In Rhode Island in the fall of 1783 a man who stole a horse was given 117 
stripes at the cart-tail, his estate was confiscated, and he was banished; while as he 
had set fire to his cell, he had the letter A branded on both cheeks. In Springfield, 
Mass., two years later, a wight named Wheeler, for coining fifty base dollars, was 
set in the pillory, drawn to the gallows and kept there an hour with his rope about 
his neck, given twenty stripes, his left arm was cut off, and he was sent to hard 
labor for three years. Pennsylvania and New York in 1787 each let a counterfeiter 
off with branding and hard labor for life. In many States women were publicly 
whipped on the bare back for larceny, receiving as much as 39 lashes with a 
cat-o’-nine-tails. In Connecticut a man was actually punished for perjury under the 
famous law of 1784; he was branded on the forehead, and sentenced to wear a 
halter for the remainder of his life. 

For American acquaintance with Beccaria, see Rowland’s “Carroll”; and Md. 
Journal, December 13, 1785. An Englishman, Rack, author of “The Inequality of 
Our Penal Laws,” was read in America; Pa. Mercury , April 28, 1786. 

69 N. Y. Packet, May 1, 1786; N. J. Journal, April'10, 1788; “Laws of New York, 
1777-1801,” I, 649, II, 242 ff.; “Mass. Acts and Laws, 1787,” p. 650; “Laws of Penn¬ 
sylvania,” 1810 Ed., Chs. 1110, 1137. 

70 N. Y. Packet, March 27, 1787. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 457 

in all, who had been in jail more than a year for a single debt which 
he might have discharged in less than that time if free; his creditor 
was a man in the same business who wished to escape competition. 71 
The Society for the Relief of Distressed Debtors during 1788 fur¬ 
nished food to more than a hundred imprisoned persons, for many 
never knew where their next meal would come from, brought blan¬ 
kets and fuel, and procured the discharge of twenty-six. 72 Maryland 
in 1787 passed a law, limited to one year, enabling an insolvent 
debtor to pass through bankruptcy proceedings to freedom, but the 
effort to extend it in 1788 failed. 73 In both Boston and Philadelphia 
a good deal of futile agitation was at different times set on foot for 
imprisoned debtors. 74 Readers of the Pennsylvania Packet could 
see such advertisements as the following from time to time: 


Old Gaol, Feb. 28 [1783]. 

Now confined for debts, about £40, one who can make over, on security, a house 
which rents for £20 per annum, exclusive of ground rent. Whoever will be so 
humane as to lend the above sum, will not only relieve me from a cold gaol and 
unmerciful creditors’ cost of suits (as I paid last summer near £4, now have the 
same sum to pay for the same debt) but likewise save my property, and enable me 
to follow my trade, to help support myself in my old age, being now sixty-three. 75 


In still another field reform was slow. Conditions in the prisons 
almost everywhere at this date would be unbelievable had there not 
persisted down to our own time prison abuses which show how much 
a ruder, rougher age might tolerate. Too often the State and larger 
city prisons were identical, the State not spending the money for 


71 N. Y. Packet, March 6, 1787. 

73 N. Y. Journal, February 19, 1789. 

73 There is no need here to recite all the various stay laws and laws temporarily 
protecting the bodies of debtors passed in the paper-money agitation of 1785-86, 
though their influence was salutary. How little the humane purpose of Maryland’s 
law was appreciated may be gathered from the appeal of “A Real Federalist” before 
the election of delegates to the State ratifying convention in 1788: “Elect no man 
who supported the law allowing insolvent debtors to discharge their persons from 
perpetual imprisonment, by honestly delivering up all their property to the use of 
their creditors. The Legislature have no right to interfere with private contracts, 
and debtors might safely trust to the humanity and clemency of their creditors, who 
will not keep them in gaol all their lives unless they deserve it.” Md. Journal, 
March 21, 1788. See Md. Journal, June 1 and July 11, 1787, for the workings of 
the law. The vote on its rejection in 1788 was 39 to 12; Md. Journal, June 3, 1788. 

t* See A. B.’s article, Boston Independent Chronicle, January 22, 1784: “The perusal 
of a late piece in the Independent Chronicle, soliciting charity for those unhappy men 
confined for debt in this town must excite the ardent wish of every man of 
benevolence, that some method might be adopted to relieve those distrest suf¬ 
ferers. . . .” The keeper of the Philadelphia jail in 1785 certified that of 151 persons 
there confined, about one-half were debtors, of whom not more than fifteen could 
support themselves; the other 60 being so miserably poor that they must perish with 
hunger and cold unless fed and clothed by charitable people. Most of them were 
confined for small debts, and were yet hopeless of ever paying them. A grand jury 
which visited the Philadelphia jail in 1786 “found many unhappy creatures, confined 
for insignificant debts by the cruelty of hard-hearted creditors. Among these were 
five men and two women, making in all seven persons, whose collective debts 
amounted to not quite so many pounds.” The jury contributed its wages to relieve 
them. American Museum, IV, 37-38 (July, 1788); Pa. Packet, September 25, 1786. 

75 March 1, 1783* 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


458 

separate incarceration. It was usual to herd the convicted, of all 
ages and both sexes, together inside the prison structure; in New 
York, Philadelphia, and other cities the males were employed in a 
body upon the streets—as “wheelbarrow men”—working, with a dis¬ 
tinguishing dress, a ball and chain, and an armed guard, where the 
idle and malevolent could insult them. 76 In many prisons the in¬ 
mates were suffered to go in filthy rags, and their beds were dirty 
and verminous. They had inadequate facilities for washing, and 
the men could seldom shave. The night rooms were swept and 
washed at infrequent intervals. Diseases, including the “jail fever” 
whose ravages Howard found so terrible in England, were common. 
The cells were freezing cold in winter, and the food served was a 
veritable starvation ration. The world-wide practise of garnish 
or chummage, by which the jailor or the other inmates compelled 
a newcomer to part with all his money or to strip, was firmly planted 
in American jails, while the jailers were frequently brutish fellows, 
caring nothing for the woes of those they supervised, willing to see 
them perish in swarms from typhus, and not only extorting special 
fees, but making an enormous profit out of the sale of food and 
drink. 77 

Bad as the physical conditions were, the social and moral evils 
were the worst. Respectable debtors, including women, and many 
others completely innocent of real wrong-doing, were compelled to 
mingle with the brutally depraved. The Grand Jury of Philadelphia 
County in 1787 complained that the prison was “open, as to a gen¬ 
eral intercourse between the criminals of the different sexes; and that 
there is not even the appearance of decency (from what they can 
learn) with respect to the scenes of debauchery that naturally result 
from such a situation, insomuch . . . that the gaol has become a 
desirable place for the more wicked and polluted of both sexes.” 
They added that the jailer sold liquor to all. 78 A year previous the 

76 Sometimes there was an iron collar around the neck. Passers-by would furnish 

the wheelbarrow men with charity, and sometimes plied them with rum; riots among 
them were not uncommon; Pa. Packet, August 25, 1787; N. Y. Packet, May 25, June 
29, 1787; Pa. Mercury, Ocfe-T6 ; 1788 ; Advertiser, January 16, 1788. 

77 See Pa. Packet, October 12, 1789, for opinions of public regarding Reynolds, 
keeper of the Philadelphia jail. 

78 They further complained “that the common hall, originally intended for the 
accommodation of debtors only, is become a place of resort for the criminals and 
debtors indiscriminately. It is with considerable concern that the jury mentions 
that . . . many worthy characters who have been so unfortunate as to be confined 
there for debt, who have once seen better days, and have been reduced by mis¬ 
fortune, should not have the liberty of a place to receive the air, without being 
interrupted by wretches who are a disgrace to human nature; together with the 
horrid noise of chains, and disorder of every kind. . . .” Pa. Gazette, September 26, 
1787. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 459 

grand jury had reported that with some of the women herded into 
the jail they had found “their innocent though imprisoned children, 
from two to ten years of age; what can be expected from those whose 
infancy is passed in such a nursery as this?” 79 A writer of the post- 
Revolutionary generation described the Philadelphia prison of these 
years with horror: 

No separation was made of the most flagrant offender and convict, from the 
prisoner who might, perhaps, be falsely suspected of some trifling misdemeanor; none 
of the old, hardened culprits from the youthful, trembling novice in crime; none 
even of the fraudulent swindler from the unfortunate and possibly the most 
estimable debtor; and . . . intermingled with all these, in one corrupt and corrupting 
assemblage, were to be found the disgusting object of popular contempt, besmeared 
with filth from the pillory; the unhappy victim of the lash, streaming with blood 
from the whipping post; the half naked vagrant; the loathsome drunkard; the sick, 
suffering with various bodily pains, and too often the unaneled malefactor, whose 
precious hours of probation had been numbered by his earthly judge. 80 


Young and impressionable youths became familiar, when cast into 
these jails, with the names, trades, and abodes of counterfeiters, pick¬ 
pockets, and thieves, learned the locations and attractions of all the 
dens of vice in town, and were drawn into partnerships in villainy. 
Older men of character found their self-respect hard to preserve. 
It required a strong will to resist the temptation to neglect one’s 
physical condition—to let the hair grow, the teeth decay, the skin 
crack for want of washing, the nails become long. Women suffered 
most from the lack of separation, and instances are recorded in which 
ladies of the highest character were confined with scoundrels whose 
victims they became. 81 

The beginnings of reform we find in Pennsylvania. Here in 1776 
was founded the Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Pris¬ 
oners, this being the year before the publication of Howard’s epoch- 
making work on “The State of Prisons in England.” The members 
were few, and the body was dissolved when the British entered the 
city; but in 1787, just after the first improvement of the criminal 
code, some philanthropic men established the Philadelphia Society 
for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, the early members in¬ 
cluding Tench Coxe and Benjamin Rush. Their pity was aroused, 
the founders stated, at sight of “the miseries which penury, hunger, 
cold, unnecessary severity, unwholesome apartments, and guilt (the 
usual attendants of prisons) involve”; and their principal objects were 


78 Pa. Packet, September 25, 1786; cf. Pa. Mercury July 22, 1785. 

80 “Notice of the Discipline of the Prison at Philadelphia, Roberts Vaux, 1826. 

81 See first report of the Prison Discipline Society, 1826. Intoxication and fighting 
seem to have been common in the New York jail. See Providence Gazette, November 
21, 1789. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


460 

to have all the prisons visited weekly, to report abuses, to investi¬ 
gate the effects of the punishments prescribed, and to suggest im¬ 
provements in discipline and penal method. 82 The president for 
the first forty years was Bishop William White of the Episcopal 
Church. 

How dire was the need for such an organization may be inferred 
from the petition of prisoners in the Philadelphia jail to charitable 
citizens, published in January, 1785. They recited that two men 
had just died there of starvation; that the allowance of food by the 
authorities, half of a fourpenny loaf each day, was totally insufficient; 
and that many more would inevitably have died of cold and hunger, 
had it not been for the gifts of some good people, and the assistance 
they received when working as a wheelbarrow gang in the streets. 
More than sixty poor wretches, however, the petition added, were 
allowed to work on the barrow only thrice a week, and were in great 
need. 83 

Within a short time the Society memorialized the Legislature for 
the substitution of private or solitary labor by the prisoners for 
public labor, and for the separation of the sexes. As the Philadelphia 
prison, used also by the State, was only a small two-story building, 
with underground cells for convicts sentenced to death, there were 
physical obstacles to the institution of any decent penal system. 
In 1788, in response to a request from the Supreme Executive Coun¬ 
cil for information, the Society prepared a detailed report upon the 
existing abuses. Liquor, it showed, was introduced in quantities as 
great as twenty gallons a day, and sold at exorbitant prices to in¬ 
mates—principally the debtors—who were allowed to get it no¬ 
where else. The forcible stripping from prisoners of their clothes 
or money was common. The Society pointed out “three great evils 
which call for attention, viz.: the mixture of the sexes, the use of 
spiritous liquors, and the indiscriminate confinement of debtors and 
persons committed for criminal offences.” There were others only 
less great, as the oppression connected with the jail fees. 

Two years previously, for example, one man, acquitted in court 
and ordered released, had been held in jail for weeks because he 

83 An account of the founding of this society appears in the Pa. Mercury, May 25, 
1787. An accompanying editorial quotes Burke upon prison reform, ana declares 
of the members: “they will have before their eyes as their model the great Mr. 
Howard, the friend of mankind (whose name has become illustrious throughout 
Europe, and is just rising in deserved estimation among us), in their hands his book.” 

83 Pa. Packet, January 31, 1785. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 461 

could not pay fees of four shillings sixpence demanded by the 
jailer. 84 It had frequently been demanded that jailers be granted 
a fixed salary, so that they would not have to wring their support 
from the wretched people in their care. It was time, too, that heat 
was provided in winter. In 1789 the Society devised a plan for the 
permanent improvement of prison discipline, while the Legislature 
passed a law requiring the keeper to prevent all communication 
between men and women felons, keep liquor out of the jail; and 
stop the extortion of perquisites. In 1790 the reformers had the 
satisfaction of seeing their general plan placed upon the statute 
books. 

The Act of April, 1790, effected a radical change in prison dis¬ 
cipline, influential over the whole nation. It instituted a basis 
of classification, for it enumerated various types of prisoners of each 
sex, and ordered them separated as much as possible. Prisoners at 
hard labor were to be kept outside the public view, and their com¬ 
munication with one another was to be greatly restricted. Drink was 
strictly prohibited, and jail fees and the practise of garnish were 
abolished. Suitable clothing was provided, and religious instruc¬ 
tion arranged. But even after new cells had been constructed in 
the yard, the jail was too small for fairly testing this system of im¬ 
provements. The separate confinement of classified groups of pris¬ 
oners and the prevention of excessive communication was possible 
only when the number of prisoners was for some reason or another 
at a minimum. The Society therefore continued to petition for a 
large new penitentiary, and to point out that it would be more than 
ever required when the much-needed revision of the penal code was 
effected. 85 

The feature of the Pennsylvania Act of 1790 which excited the 
most interest was the plan of punishing the more hardened offenders 
by placing each in a separate cell for the performance of his tasks. 
The Act called for the erection in the jail yard of a number of tiny 
cells, each isolated from the common yard by a wall which would 
“prevent all external communication.” This experiment was watched 
with interest by States which had witnessed the failure of humiliat¬ 
ing public labor. It was thought to succeed, and in due time was 
taken up elsewhere. In Virginia during the later years of the 


84 Pa. Packet, September 25, 1786. 

« Tyson, “Annual Discourse before the Hist. Soc. of Pa., 1831. 


462 THE AMERICAN STATES 

Confederation the ground was being paved for it. Jefferson and his 
co-workers in revising the laws had provided for hard labor on the 
roads, canals, and other public works as a penalty for serious crimes. 
The plan of course failed of adoption when the new code failed, in 
1786. But Jefferson meanwhile, in Europe, had been struck with 
the success of a trial in England of solitary labor, had also heard 
the idea suggested in France, and from a Lyons architect had ob¬ 
tained the copy of a prison-plan for separately confined inmates. 
This he sent to the elder Latrobe, the architect of a proposed State 
prison at Richmond, about 1787; and the general building plan was 
ultimately adopted, though Virginia did not pass a law for solitary 
labor until after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. As we 
now know, solitary confinement is inhuman, but the movement 
showed that men were awaking to the existing abuses. 

The most striking example of what a place of detention should not 
be was to be found in Connecticut. Here shortly before the Revolu¬ 
tion there was selected as a general prison an old copper-mine at 
Newgate, in Granby township, on the western slope of a high hill 
fourteen miles north of Hartford. In the fall of 1773 a legislative 
committee reported that it had prepared “a well-finished room” of 
twelve by fifteen feet and placed over the shaft an iron door; and 
an act was passed constituting “the subterraneous caverns and build¬ 
ings” a jail for burglars, horse-thieves, and counterfeiters. To 
thrifty-minded Assemblymen, and Connecticut legislators never 
lacked thrift, the paramount advantage of this ready-made prison 
was its cheapness; but it was also chosen because escape would be 
difficult, and the prospect of confinement underground would prob¬ 
ably strike terror to criminals. Three parallel galleries ran toward 
the heart of the hill, extending some eight hundred feet, and con¬ 
necting by many cross-passages. The greatest depth reached was 
three hundred feet. The galleries were low and narrow, being cut 
through solid rock, but they expanded to a considerable height in a 
central chamber which was fitted up with sleeping accommodations 
for the convicts. Their floors were covered with slime, and in some 
places during rainy seasons with shallow pools, fed by an unceasing 
drip from the roofs. The darkness was of course intense. Happily, 
the mine was warm in winter, and fairly cool in summer. 

Connecticut committed her first prisoners to Newgate at the end 
of 1773. Two years later she began to remit thither her political 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 463 


prisoners—Tories, suspected spies, and stray Britons, many of them 
men of education, character, and means. They naturally raised a 
great outcry over the cruelty of such underground incarceration. 
In 1781 twenty-eight prisoners rose against their keepers and es¬ 
caped. After the war repairs were made, and a harsher discipline 
was instituted. Many of the prisoners were chained to a beam over¬ 
head while working at nailmaking or cooperage. In the basement 
of the guardhouse was a comparatively comfortable room in which 
those guilty of the less serious crimes were disposed—the “jug”; 
the others were kept in the dirty central cavern at night, huddled in 
an indiscriminate body in wooden bunks under a wet roof, and 
against damp walls. Their clothes mouldering on their backs from 
the dampness, racked by tuberculosis and rheumatism, and tormented 
by vermin and rats, the prisoners must have suffered greatly. Yet 
the more abandoned used to volunteer for the remotest dungeons, 
as places of night confinement, it being explained that they could 
there “curse and swear and fight, and do other unutterable abomin¬ 
ations,” unmolested. Probably, stated the Prison Discipline Society 
many years after this period, “there has never been on earth a 
stronger emblem of the pit than the sleeping rooms of that prison, 
so filthy, so crowded, so inclined to evil, so unrestrained.” There 
was no classification, and as Timothy Dwight remarked, “the young 
adventurer in villainy was in effect put to school to the adept.” 86 
In other New England States the penal conditions till long after 
1789 were such as to belie the reputation of the section for enlighten¬ 
ment and humanity. Neither New Hampshire nor Vermont built 
state penitentiaries till early in the next century, for crime was 
so rare that the expense seemed unnecessary. The former had pos¬ 
sessed an old Provincial jail at Portsmouth, but its wretched state, 
which had excited frequent comment, made it necessary to rely 
upon local places of detention. Massachusetts was awakened in 1785 
by the exploits of certain notorious thieves, such as Stephen Bur¬ 
roughs, who broke from county jail after county jail with ease, set¬ 
ting the laws at naught, to the necessity of providing a secure State 
prison. In March of that year the General Court provided for a 
jail on Castle Island, in Boston Harbor, for all persons sentenced 
to confinement at hard labor. Four years later the Legislature ac- 


89 For matter upon the Newgate prison see C. B. Todd, “In Olde Connecticut, 

1. 12; Kendall’s “Travels”; Dwight, “Travels, I, Letter 27; Report of Prison 


Ch, 

Discipline Society 


1826. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


464 

cepted the principle that disgraceful punishments in public should 
give way to confinement at hard indoor labor, and thereby made the 
need for increased prison facilities a pressing one. But the Castle 
Island prison did not meet it. There were no solitary cells, and visi¬ 
tors described the place as having “the air of a school for sin and 
infamy.” 87 In Rhode Island the Newport jail had been used by 
the Provincial authorities for Provincial malefactors; and when 
after the Revolution it was seen that a change was urgent, the Provi¬ 
dence jail, which had been built many years before at a cost of only 
£2000, and was wholly unsuitable, was utilized. Yet during the 
troubled period of the Confederation there was not even an agitation 
for a decent prison. 

County or municipal jails were employed by New York for State 
prisoners until near the end of the century. Conditions were worse 
in the Bridewell in New York city than among the State convicts, 
but this was only because the Bridewell was the more crowded; the 
administrative system was equally bad in both instances. In New 
Jersey also the State relied upon the county prisons. 88 Maryland 
kept her stocks, pillory, and whipping post during the period of the 
Confederation. She had no State jail; the principal prison was that 
of Baltimore County, which had been built together with the county 
courthouse under an act of Assembly passed in 1768. 89 The pillory 
and whipping post stood under the courthouse. Many convicts were 
sent to work upon the public roads, being employed as were pris¬ 
oners in some Southern States for a half-century after the Civil War; 
that is, in gangs, chained together at the ankle and sometimes also 
at the waist, and guarded by armed overseers. At night they were 
crowded into “blockhouses” along the line of work. But even at 
this early day the more humane portion of the public frequently ex¬ 
pressed its disapprobation of the gang-work and the inevitable ac¬ 
companying brutality. 

Tourists who travelled through the South would have inquired 
equally in vain for State penitentiaries. Virginia in 1776 threw 
Tories into a Williamsburg jail in which they suffered so terribly 
that their complaints brought on a legislative investigation. The 
committee of inquiry informed the Provincial Convention that the 
prison was overcrowded; that despite the heat, there was no fit ven- 

87 S. Ca. State Gazette. Boston correspondence, February 25, 1795. 

88 Barnes, “Hist, of the Penal, Reformatory, and Corrective Institutions of N. 
Jersey.” 

89 Scharf’s “Maryland,” II, 43. 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 465 

tilation; that some of the rooms were kept clean, but others abounded 
in filth; and that even in the clean rooms there was a smell so offen¬ 
sive that it would injure men of the most robust health. They added 
that one old man was in a fever, proceeding probably from his 
“peevishness” under his chain. 90 We know little about the Caro¬ 
lina or Georgia prisons, but that little is not reassuring. Thus we 
find a Charleston grand jury in 1795, for example, presenting as a 
grievance “the horrid situation of the gaol.” 91 

V. Changes in Education 

As new social and political conditions were evolved during and 
after the Revolution, there came changes in education to correspond 
with them. The organization of the schools and the means of fos¬ 
tering them varied greatly in different States in 1776. It is a fa¬ 
miliar fact that in Europe wherever Calvinism, Lutheranism, and 
Puritanism prevailed, universal education was likely to be cherished 
by the people, and there alone. Hence wherever in America the in¬ 
fluence of Puritanism, Scotch Presbyterianism, or the Dutch Re¬ 
formed Church was strong, a sturdy growth of free public schools 
presently appeared; while in Colonies where the Anglicans had a 
dominant social or governmental position, a more aristocratic ideal 
had a repressing effect upon democratic education. In the New 
England Colonies outside of Rhode Island there was a generous 
and far-sighted government activity in education up to the Revolu¬ 
tion. In New York and the Middle Colonies generally the parochial 
system had been early planted by the Quaker, Lutheran, Mennonite, 
and other churches; these church schools were supplemented by 
charitable schools, and the idea grew up that the only government 
interference necessary was in assisting the maintenance of pauper 
tuition. In Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia most children of 
the well-to-do were taught by tutors or in private schools; and 
while there were some church schools, they were few compared with 
those of the Middle Colonies. 

Several decades before the Revolution there appeared evidences 
that north of the Potomac, and especially in New England, Euro¬ 
pean educational ideas and procedure were being modified, and that 
American schools were being differentiated into a type of their own. 

80 Eckenrode, “Rev. in Va.,” i 53 ‘ 54 - 

81 S. Ca. Gasette, January 26, 1795. 


466 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


By 1750 the common schools of New England were being recognized 
as town schools, not church schools—a recognition impossible a cen¬ 
tury before, when town and church-society had in many ways been 
identical. As population flowed westward in New England, the 
towns ceased to be compact communities, but spread over dozens of 
square miles of hill, plain, and forest, with small settlements dotted 
here and there. The people in the half-inaccessible outskirts of 
these sprawling towns needed and demanded schools of their own, 
so that before 1760 the district school system—unfortunate but in¬ 
evitable—began to take firm root. Improved texts competed with 
such crude and narrowly religious books as the New England Primer, 
which had first appeared in 1690, and had rapidly spread to the 
borders of Maryland. A decline began to be evident in the Latin 
grammar schools—at the famous Boston Latin School, founded 
in 1634, had been educated Franklin, Hancock, Cushing, Bowdoin, 
Robert Treat Paine, Sr., and Samuel Adams 92 —because they were 
not sufficiently practical and democratic; and the distinctively 
American academy began to rise in its place. Two new urban col¬ 
leges, Pennsylvania and King’s, both founded only a few years 
before George III mounted the throne, aligned themselves with 
this practical tendency, the former becoming noted for scientific 
and medical instruction. In obedience to the democratic move¬ 
ment Yale in 1767 and Harvard in the year of the Boston tea- 
party, ceased to list their students according to the social rank of 
their parents. Education on this continent was ceasing to be 
English, and growing American. 93 

The Revolution afforded a new basis for this movement. At first, 
to be sure, it seemed that its influence was negative, not positive. 
The war struck a disastrous blow at education all over the Union. 
Teachers enlisted, funds were appropriated to military purposes, and 
interest in cultural affairs flagged. Charity schools were usually the 
first to close, but private and even town schools soon followed them. 
In New York city the schools almost went out of existence when 
the British took possession. In New Hampshire scarcely a vestige 
of grammar school education was left in 1781. 94 Moreover, when the 



“ A. Drake, “Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, 

Spp +np Hicfnriac n-f l —« -1_i i _ i 


instruction in i 77 8 , and exerted a wide influence, causing other academies soon 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 467 


several States began to take action to regulate education, it was 
sometimes retrogression, not progress. But good or bad, in the 
sum it showed that Americans were going to develop their own edu¬ 
cational institutions to fit their own needs, and that in the end they 
would move forward rapidly. It showed that the whole basis of 
education had changed and improved. That basis had been, for 
British America as a whole, primarily religious. The Revolution 
made the primary basis political. It made the citizenship self-gov¬ 
erning, and vastly enlarged the bounds of that citizenship; and it 
was recognized that the men who cast the ballots and ran for offices 
should be educated men. 

Scarcely had the Revolution ended before leading statesmen were 
expressing this idea that in an independent America, the govern¬ 
ment must support education, or thoughtfulness and knowledge 
would cease to be pillars of the state. While the British still held 
New York city, Jan. 27, 1782, Governor Clinton urged on the leg¬ 
islature the promotion and encouragement of learning. Besides the 
general advantages, he said, they would find that “it is the peculiar 
duty of the government of a free State where the highest employ¬ 
ments are open to citizens of every rank to endeavor by the estab¬ 
lishment of schools and seminaries to diffuse that degree of literature 
which is necessary to the establishment of public trusts.” Jefferson 
wrote Madison in 1787, just after a number of States had shown 
what confusion could be wrought in financial affairs by an ignorant 
electorate, in the same vein: “Above all things, I hope the educa¬ 
tion of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on this 
good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation 
of a due degree of liberty.” John Adams, in his “Defence of the 
Constitutions,” written in 1786-87, remarked that the instruction 
of the people, in the practise of their moral duties “and of their 
political and civil duties, as members of society and freemen, ought 
to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the 
conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practised 
in any age or nation.” Jay and Madison might be quoted to the 
same effect, and Washington’s injunction in his Farewell Address. 95 


to be founded. Washington sent two of his nephews to be educated there. Sanborn, 

^95 Cf * Academicus, addressing the convention which drew up the Virginia Consti¬ 
tution 'in 1776; Va. Gazette, May 31, 1776. He exhorted the members to remember 
“that it is learning alone which can give any lasting stability to your structure; for 
will a soul, grovelling in ignorance, perceive the value of that Constitution which 
you now design to frame?” He asked for aid to William and Mary College. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


468 

In seven among the original thirteen States, the first Constitutions 
said nothing upon schools or education—in Virginia and South 
Carolina, in all of the Middle States except Pennsylvania, and in 
New Hampshire. Two States made no Constitutions, leaving four 
which treated the subject in their fundamental law. Yet John 
Adams, in his “Thoughts on Government” addressed to Wythe early 
in 1776, writing of the new Constitutions, had stated that “Laws for 
the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, 
are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous 
mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.” 
Of the four State Constitutions which mentioned education, that of 
Georgia simply directed the establishment of schools in each county, 
to be supported at State expense; that of North Carolina ordered 
the State to maintain a school or schools for youth, and that of 
Pennsylvania a school in each county, “at low prices,” while in 
both States learning was to be promoted in one or more universities; 
and that of Massachusetts contained an admirably full section, de¬ 
claring it the duty of the legislatures and magistrates to cherish 
learning in all its seminaries, especially at Harvard, in the public 
schools, and the town grammar schools. In her second Constitution, 
New Hampshire copied the Massachusetts provision. Delaware, in 
her second Constitution, briefly ordered the Legislature to establish 
schools. The first Constitution of Vermont, that of 1777, directed 
the towns to maintain schools at low prices, a grammar school in 
each county, and a university for the State—an admirable section. 

Until 1789, there was almost no legislation in the States affecting 
the status of the common schools. Recovering from the shock of 
the war, the country felt too poor to undertake new responsibilities 
in this field. A committee of the regents of the University of the 
State of New York, including Hamilton, Jay, and Duane, recom¬ 
mended in February, 1787, the public promotion of schools, but none 
was established for several years. Pennsylvania similarly lagged. 
Jefferson in 1779 brought forward in Virginia an admirably compre¬ 
hensive plan for a State system of general elementary education and 
higher training, but his bills received no legislative approval until 
1796. In North Carolina the constitutional injunction that the 
Legislature establish a school or schools for inexpensive education 
was disregarded. Vermont, at one extremity of the nation, and 
Georgia at the other, were alone in taking constructive action. The 


PROGRESS IN LIBERALISM AND HUMANITY 469 


former in 1782 authorized the division of towns into districts, pro¬ 
vided for the supervision of district schools, and arranged for their 
maintenance partly by a rate-bill upon parents and partly by taxes 
and subscriptions; while State aid was also granted. In Georgia 
Governor Lyman Hall, a native of Connecticut and a graduate of 
Yale, furnished the impulse for educational legislation. In 1783 he 
urged upon the Legislature “an early foundation for seminaries of 
learning,” and it at once granted a thousand acres to each county 
for the support of schools, this proving especially useful in en¬ 
couraging academies. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
South Carolina all took notable steps for the endowment of higher 
education, but even in this field progress was for some years to be 
very slow. 

Much might be said of the effect of liberty upon the States in 
awakening a new interest in internal improvements—there was a 
burst of proposals for waterways and roads after the peace. The 
Revolution meant a great deal to the press, freeing it from a govern¬ 
mental scrutiny of the political utterances of books and periodicals 
which in many Colonies had been close, and had resulted in a 
number of famous legal battles. Mason’s Bill of Rights declared 
that the “freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of 
liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” 
Declarations of the same purport were made in the early Constitu¬ 
tions of all the other Southern States, the New England States, and 
Pennsylvania. Much might be said upon other of the results of 
independence upon State affairs. But it is sufficient to repeat that 
the political revolution constituted only half of the history of the 
American people written between Lexington and Yorktown; that a 
social and an intellectual revolution also occurred. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 

The republic had to begin its history with the worst of financial 
expedients, an emission of paper money. To the second Continental 
Congress a committee of the New York Provincial Congress, headed 
by Gouvemeur Morris, presented a report upon the possible methods 
of raising money for the nation’s needs. It believed that an issue 
of bills would be the soundest measure if they were given immediate 
and general circulation, and if means were provided for redeeming 
them. If this were done, it added, the paper “will be a new bond of 
union to the associated Colonies, and every inhabitant thereof will be 
bound in interest to endeavor that ways and means be fallen upon 
for sinking of it.” 1 Three modes of procedure were available. Each 
Colony might print for itself the sum apportioned by Congress; or 
Congress might print the whole, and each Colony become responsible 
for redeeming its proportionate share; or Congress might print the 
whole, and apportion the several shares to the different Colonies, but 
require that if one Province defaulted, its sister Provinces must pay 
its debt. The committee favored the third plan, and Congress 
adopted it. On June 22, 1775, it decided to issue bills of credit, 
not bearing interest; and £3,000,000 was duly emitted. 

This emission, earnestly opposed by Franklin and others who 
wished to obtain money by floating popular loans, was divided among 
the States on the basis of their supposed population, including 
negroes. It was not a strictly fair basis, but nearly enough so, for 
wealth bore a roughly direct ratio to population. Virginia’s allot¬ 
ment was the highest, $496,278, and Delaware’s the lowest, 
$37,219.60. There was of course much Congressional guesswork 
in the estimates of population. 2 According to the program of Con¬ 
gress, each Colony was to sink its quota in four equal payments, a 

1 4 American Archives, II, 1262. 

2 Congress early asked for State censuses. A Congressional committee in the spring 
of 1783 made the following computation: New Hampshire, 82,200 white inhabitants; 
Rhode Island, 50,400; Massachusetts, 350,000; Connecticut, 206,000; New York’ 
200,000; New Jersey, 130,000; Pennsylvania, 320,000; Delaware, 35,000; Maryland^ 

470 


THE ST A TES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 471 


year apart, beginning November 30, 1779. For this end they were 
to levy special taxes, and send the proceeds to Philadelphia in Con¬ 
tinental bills, Colony bills, or gold and silver. But as it became 
plain that the difficulties with England would be long-continued, three 
millions was seen to be a totally inadequate sum, and before the end 
of 1775 another issue of the same amount, against the renewed pro¬ 
test of Dr. Franklin, was voted. 

Congress continued issuing paper in ever-heavier quantities until 
the spring of 1780, and the bills depreciated faster and faster. There 
were thirty-seven emissions in all. Their steadily increasing size was 
necessitated by the more and more appalling drop of the paper in 
value, and it became clear that if the pace were kept up, the printing 
presses would soon be turning out money by the billion. The rake’s 
progress had to be stopped. Congress tried to reassure the public 
in the summer of 1779 by pointing out that if the national debt 
at the end of the war reached $300,000,000, this would be only a 
hundred dollars for every inhabitant, an amount trifling if its pay¬ 
ment were spread over twenty years. But at the end of the year it 
was plain that redemption of the paper at face value, or anything 
like it, would be impossible. On March 18, 1780, Congress therefore 
took the momentous step of a qualified repudiation of the Continental 
bills. 

In face value these squarish bits of yellow paper with which the 
country had been snowed under were worth well over $240,000,000, 
but Congress agreed that it would be liberal to estimate their actual 
specie worth at $5,000,000. The States were therefore asked to 
send Congress $15,000,000 a month for thirteen months in these old 
bills, and Congress promised to repay the States with a new issue, at 
the rate of one dollar of the new for forty of the old. The old Conti¬ 
nental bills were of course to be destroyed as they came in. To keep 
the new issue sound and valuable, it was to be redeemable in specie 
in six years, was to bear interest at five per cent., and was to be re¬ 
ceivable in payment of taxes. If any State failed to redeem its 
share, the United States was to be responsible. It was agreed that 
the new issue should have not more than one-twentieth the face value 
of the old, which meant not more than ten millions, and that three- 
fifths of the bills should be paid to the States, and the rest kept in 


j 700 ■ Virginia. 400,000; North Carolina, 170,000; South Carolina. 150,000; and 
eorgia 25*,000, making a total of 2,339,300. N. H. Prov., State, and Town Papers, 

III. 976 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


472 

the national treasury. As a matter of fact, less than $4,500,000 
worth of the new replacement bills were actually struck off. 

Thus terminated the great adventure of Congress with large-scale 
emissions of paper money. In the end almost $120,000,000 worth 
of the Continentals was paid into the Congressional treasury, and 
the holders received $3,000,000 therefor. Of course the virtual re¬ 
pudiation of this immense mass of paper was a heavy blow to 
thousands of holders. They had parted with valuable property for 
the nation’s promise to pay, and many public-spirited men were 
ruined. 3 


I. Congressional Demands on the States 

Congress had meanwhile tried a variety of expedients to add to 
the more and more precarious income derived from paper money 
issues. In 1776 it turned to the plan of Franklin for floating a loan 
among the people, and asked patriotic Americans to lend five million 
Continental dollars, to be repaid with interest at four per cent. Such 
loans were not at this period a common practice among nations. 
Upon such uncertain security as the American cause offered, and 
with so low an interest rate, the response was feeble, though not an 
utter failure. Congress in the same year resorted to a lottery. In 
January of 1777 it took a long step forward—one which it would 
certainly have taken long before had it only possessed more faith 
in the willingness of the State governments to assist it. It called 
upon the thirteen Legislatures to raise by taxation during 1777 as 
much money as the wealth of the inhabitants justified, and send it 
to the Continental treasury. No quotas being fixed, the returns 
were disappointing, though they also were not a complete failure. 
Printing press, popular loans, a lottery, and a requisition upon the 
States had now all been resorted to. 4 

As the issue of paper became more and more plainly a failure, 
Congress more and more depended upon requisitions, until they 
became its sole reliance. After the Articles of Confederation had 

3 A Pennsylvania farmer is quoted in the Pa. Packet, May 9, 1780: “I am near 
seventy years of age, I have a large family of children to provide for, a great part 
of my property has been sold long since for Continental money, which I have kept 
by me in confidence it would have been redeemed at the value I received it, but I 
am disappointed and ruined. My loss is very heavy, and it greatly afflicts me; . . . 
but I will never forsake the cause of liberty and die Tory.” 

4 Journals Cont. Cong., VII, 36; A. S. Bolles, “Financial Hist. U. S.,” I, 51. As 
Franklin .said, borrowing was not an efficient resource, “because no interest can 
tempt men to lend paper now, which, paid together with that interest a year hence 
will not probably be worth half as much as the principal sum is at present.” 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 473 

been sent out for ratification, and Congress saw before it a prospect 
of definite powers, it was encouraged to make firmer requests of the 
States, specifying the exact amounts to be raised. At the beginning 
of 1778 the Legislatures were informed that it would be necessary 
that year to raise five millions by State taxation. A somewhat 
arbitrary apportionment was adopted, which took cognizance of 
such facts as that New York city and its vicinity were occupied by 
the British and could not pay. It was unnecessary to be scrupulous¬ 
ly fair in the appointment, for the sums were regarded as loans, to 
be repaid with interest. The States were requested that fall to 
refrain from issuing any more bills of credit upon their own account, 
and were asked to call in previous issues when possible; it being 
suggested that they henceforth “provide for the exigencies of war 
and the support of government by taxes levied within the year, or 
such other expedient as may produce a competent supply.” 

One requisition in 1778 and 1779 followed another; and as they 
were payable in the Continental bills that the printing presses were 
furiously turning out, they aggregated sums that were nominally 
huge—those of May and October, 1779, aggregating a total of 
$60,000,000. The whole amount yielded by the requisitions before 
Congress called in the depreciated Continentals was $54,667,000 in 
Continental and State paper, which was equivalent in specie—accept¬ 
ing the scale of depreciation that was used by Congress at the time 
the various State payments were made—to $1,856,000. After the 
recall of the Continental bills at 40 to 1, the requisitions were of 
course for nominally smaller sums, that of January, 1781, when the 
plight of the nation seemed truly desperate, being for only $890,000. 
The response of the States was not more vigorous, and the money 
received from these later requisitions up to the time of the surrender 
of Cornwallis in October, 1781, was only $1,592,000 in specie. In 
brief, all the money requisitions from the beginning of the resort to 
them by Congress in 1777 until the close of active fighting produced 
the pitiful total of $2,448,000. 

Late in 1779 Congress asked the States for grants of specific 
supplies, or as they were called, “specifics,” and ordered its agents to 
commandeer needed goods. 5 Near the close of the year the States 
were called upon to forward com, wheat, and flour in specified 

‘The States had been recommended on October 2, 1778, to authorize commis¬ 
sioners to seize goods for the armies. See Bolles, I, 67-68; 89; 93. 


474 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


amounts to places designated by the Commissary-General, Virginia, 
for example, being requested to contribute 20,000 barrels of corn. 
A few days later a general call for supplies was sent out, each State 
being left free to furnish what it could, and all being assured that as 
the supplies came in, the States would be credited for them at their 
money value. These levies “in kind” were a wasteful and otherwise 
unsatisfactory substitute for the levying of money taxes. 

One objection lay in the unevenness of the burden placed upon 
the States, the South in the closing campaigns bearing more than its 
share. Another was that the cost of transporting supplies to the 
troops often exceeded the cost of the same commodities in the vicinity 
of the army encampments. “It is too precarious a dependence,” 
wrote Hamilton in September, 1780, “because the States will never 
be sufficiently impressed with our necessities. Each will make its 
own ease a primary object, the supply of the army a secondary one. 
The variety of channels through which the business is transacted will 
multiply the number of persons employed, and the opportunities of 
embezzling public money. . . . Very little of the money raised in 
the several States will go into the Continental treasury, on pretense 
that it is all exhausted in providing the quotas of supplies, and 
the public will be without funds for the other demands of govern¬ 
ment.” Like all Hamilton’s writings on financial subjects, this ex¬ 
pressed a shrewd grasp of realities. The actual value of the provi¬ 
sions and other supplies furnished by the States for Congress, from 
beginning to end, is put by Hamilton’s report of 1790 at $881,000. 

The year 1781 was notable in the country’s history not for the 
surrender of Cornwallis alone, for it was the year that Robert 
Morris took charge of national finances. Hamilton had suggested in 
the spring of 1780, in writing to Morris, that Congress should appoint 
a minister of finance, and that he would be glad to hear it say to 
Morris, “Thou art the man.” 6 Peletiah Webster in February of 
the same year urged the appointment of a single officer in place of 
the Treasury Board, and in September Hamilton declared that “Mr. 
Robert Morris would have many things in his favor for the depart¬ 
ment of finance.” On February 9, 1781, Congress created the office 
of Superintendent of Finance, and defined with praiseworthy exact¬ 
ness his duties. Morris entered upon them in the middle of May. A 
successful Philadelphia merchant, who by twenty years of labor and 

"See “Works,” I, 21 5-228, 253; III, 61 ff. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 475 

enterprise had won the right to live at some ease, he regarded his 
new burdens with misgiving; for, as he wrote Jay, he knew that 
the reason for his appointment lay in “the derangement of our money 
affairs, the enormity of our public expenditures, the confusion in all 
our departments, the languor of our general system, the complexity 
and consequent inefficacy of our operations.” 

Morris saw clearly what ought to be done, but to do it was a 
different matter. The old resort to one makeshift after another, the 
timid requests, the dependence upon the good will of the States, the 
reliance upon such uneconomical and irritating expedients as the 
calls for specific supplies, must be swept away. In their place taxes 
ought to be laid in specie, and as far as possible to be imposed and 
collected by the national government. It was impossible at the time 
for the government to lay or collect a cent, and while this remained 
true, it was important that the State payment of national requisitions 
should somehow be made more regular and certain. Morris wrote 
with exasperation to Jay in July, 1781: “The various requisitions of 
Congress to the several States, none of them entirely complied with, 
create a considerable balance in favor of the United States, and the 
claiming this balance is delivered over to me as revenue; while on 
the other hand the dangerous practice of taking articles for the 
public service, and giving certificates to the people, has created a 
very general and very heavy debt. ... If the certificates were not 
in my way, there is still an infinite difference between the demand of 
a balance from the States and an effectual revenue.” 

Morris promptly made a firm gesture. On May 21, 1781, the 
national treasurer was directed to draw upon the States at thirty 
days’ notice for their unpaid quotas of the requisition of August, 
1780, and to give notice that he would call for other quotas as they 
came due. The States had responded very unevenly to the requisi¬ 
tions, the New England group doing by far the best, and it was 
hoped that the laggards could somehow be prodded forward. All 
State payments were of course regarded as loans, to be repaid by 
the national government with interest. But though theoretically 
no State lost by paying the government more than its due share of 
the war-costs, it was plain that actually it ran a great risk of doing 
so. What if the government never repaid, or paid only in part? 
Hence the constant State jealousies over money matters, and the 
complaints of Massachusetts and others that they bore an undue part 


476 THE AMERICAN STATES 

of the burden; hence the indisposition of many to do more than they 
could avoid. On July 25 Morris made an appeal to the thirteen 
State executives. “It gives me great pain to learn that there is a 
pernicious idea prevalent among some of the States that their ac¬ 
counts are not to be adjusted with the continent,” he wrote. “Such 
ideas cannot fail to spread listless languor over all our operations.” 
But the States proved as recalcitrant in their dealings with the 
earnest financier as they had been with the careless Treasury Board. 
“It is like preaching to the dead,” Morris said of his appeals. On 
October 19 he prefaced another Congressional request for funds, 
$8,000,000 this time, with a new circular explaining that it was 
impossible to obtain money abroad when none was forthcoming at 
home, and that the public creditors simply could not be paid until 
the States awakened to their plain duty. 

Once more the response of the States was feeble and uneven, and 
so it remained. The demand for eight millions for 1782 was followed 
by one of two millions for the services of 1783. But the whole tax- 
income of Congress for these two years was computed by Morris at 
only $1,466,000, and the heavy deficit had to be made up by con¬ 
tracting new debts at home and abroad. In disgust and discourage¬ 
ment, early in 1784 Morris gave notice of his resignation, and there 
being no person competent or willing to take his place, Congress 
placed the treasury under three commissioners. 7 

The remaining requisitions up to the year 1789, and the fruit they 
bore, may be briefly summarized. In the spring of 1784 Congress 
called for the payment of a total of $2,670,000, partly in specie and 
partly in “indents”; and it added the liberal provision that all re¬ 
ceipts would be credited upon previous unmet requisitions. Even 
had this sum been paid in full, it would not have discharged all the 
arrears upon old requisitions; and the next year Congress demanded 
the whole balance of $3,000,000 due. In each of the three following 
years there came new requisitions. Hamilton’s report and the Re¬ 
port of 1700 disagree in their estimate of the returns, but the differ¬ 
ences can be reconciled, showing that the receipts were $1,017,595 in 

7 See Oberholtzer’s “Robert Morris,” Ch. 4. A committee of Congress after con¬ 
ferring with Morris, reported in May, 1782, that further circulars to the States would 
be useless, but that it was imperative that the most effective means be used to obtain a 
response to the requisitions. Congress therefore resolved to send John Rutledge and 
George Clymer southward, and Joseph Montgomery and Jesse Root north and east, to 
exhort the laggard States to act. They came back discouraged. Some States, they 
found, had even raised money to meet tneir quotas, and then had begun applying it to 
their own uses. Journals Cont. Cong., XXII, 289 ft. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 477 

specie, $1,541,631 in “indents,” and $27,730 in supplies. After the 
adoption of the Constitution, in straightening out the accounts with 
the States, Hamilton credited them with additional receipts to the 
value of $947,326. The grand total paid by the States to Congress, 
from the beginning of 1784 to the end of the Confederation, may 
therefore be placed at $4,434,282. 

In the fifteen years 1775-1789 the entire amount obtained from the 
State governments after vast effort, under the system of requisitions, 
was about ten and a quarter million dollars; and this though the 
States represented a sturdy population which, despite the losses from 
the war, grew markedly in wealth during the period. Of course the 
national government obtained large sums from the people through 
its emissions of paper, and considerable sums through the loan offices. 
The distractions of war, especially in invaded sections, the losses 
from British devastation, the stoppage of most of our commerce, and 
the stringency of coin, multiplied the difficulties of the State tax- 
collectors. But Morris repeatedly expressed his conviction that the 
States were amply able to pay if they would, and he was quite right. 
But for Rhode Island’s stubbornness at one critical moment, and New 
York’s later, Congress would have won the right to levy a five per 
cent, duty on imports, thus in a measure making it independent of 
the States. While it was dependent, their selfishness, their jealousy 
of one another, and their want of respect for the government of the 
Confederation, made a reliable national revenue impossible. 

The unevenness with which the States shared the national burden 
was of course great. It is difficult to exhibit it, because, in the first 
place, no full and correct statement of what the several States paid 
and failed to pay Congress was ever made out; and in the second, 
because of the many complicating factors involved, some States 
suffering more from invasion than others, and some expending much 
more on their own troops and warships than their neighbors. But we 
know that during the years 1779-81 inclusive the payments of the 
States in valid drafts upon their treasuries, as received by Congress, 
were as follows: Massachusetts, $447,000; Connecticut, $375,000; 
Virginia, $278,000; Pennsylvania, $188,000; New Hampshire, 
$123,000; and Maryland, $116,000. New York had furnished 
$98,000 and North Carolina $73,000, the other five States paying 
smaller sums. Connecticut was certainly doing much more nearly 
her full part than Pennsylvania. Hamilton in May, 1790, gave the 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


478 

nation a “general abstract of the sums of money, including indents 
and paper money of every kind, reduced to specie value, which have 
been received by, or paid to, the several States by Congress, from 
the commencement of the Revolution to the present period:” 


state Paid to State Received from State 

New Hampshire . $ 44°>974- 2 9 $ 466,544.60 

Massachusetts . 1 , 245 , 737-25 3,167,020.32 

Rhode Island . 1,028,511.33 310,395.21 

Connecticut . 1,016,273.15 1,607,259.31 

New York . 822,803.60 1 , 545 , 889-45 

New Jersey . 366,729.63 512,916.23 

Pennsylvania . 2,087,276.00 2,629,410.41 

Delaware . 63,817.60 208,878.68 

Maryland . 609,617.60 945 , 537-39 

Virginia . 482,881.58 1,963,811 .71 

North Carolina . 788,031.12 219,835-79 

South Carolina . 1,014,808.25 499,325.22 

Georgia . 679,412.49 122,744.52 


These statistics do not tell the whole story. 8 Hamilton admitted 
that the figures for moneys received from the States did not show 
“the actual specie value,” that being in some instances impossible 
to ascertain. The South contributed heavily in provisions and other 
“specifics,” not included in the table. But after all allowances have 
been made, it is evident that the burden was unfairly divided. 

II. State Reliance on Paper Money 

So much for the direct contributions of the States to the national 
treasury; what were the expenditures of the States for themselves, 
and what were the indirect expenditures for the nation? The States 
had to raise troops and put them into the field; they had to take 
emergency measures to prevent invasion, to meet it, or to repair its 
ravages; they had to maintain their own governments. They issued 
their own paper money, and they had their own difficulties in im¬ 
provising tax systems, in borrowing abroad, and in obtaining a reve¬ 
nue from commerce. All contracted great debts. Jefferson, in writ¬ 
ing of Hamilton’s assumption plan, said that “nobody knew what 
those debts were, what their amount, or what their proofs. . . . We 
do not know how much is to be reimbursed to one State and how 
much to another.” He hardly exaggerated the confusion and doubt 
which overlay the accounts of the States like a heavy cloud, and will 

8 Some illuminating supplementary tables may be found in Pitkin, “Hist. U. S.,” II, 
538. Of course, some States were quite unwilling to accept Hamilton’s computation 
as just. Hamilton’s table is printed in American State Papers, “Finances,” I, 53. 















THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 479 

always overlie them. A complete, detailed record of the finances 
of all thirteen would be a maze of figures and estimates hardly pene¬ 
trable and quite profitless. 

But a summary view of State finances in the years 1775-1789 is 
readily obtainable, and it shows that certain generalizations can be 
made applicable to the financial history of the States as a group. The 
problem in 1775 of raising enormous sums of money for immediate 
war purposes was not novel, for the French and Indian wars had 
presented it, but the conditions were novel—much of the population 
opposed the war, and the motherland could not, as before, be counted 
on for ultimate help in wiping out the debts by her reimbursements. 
The first recourse on any large scale was to paper issues. Then, 
when the danger of these emissions was discovered, taxation was 
earnestly attempted, accompanied in most States by a lull in the 
printing of paper money. In the closing years of the war, 1780-81, 
the poverty of many communities and their protests against the 
heavy tax burden forced a sporadic return to bills of credit, but by 
no means on the former scale. After the war, a gallant effort was 
made to restore financial stability. Paper was repudiated, or re¬ 
deemed at a depreciated rate; taxes were levied with new vigor; 
several States profited largely, and all but a few to some extent 
(1781-85) by renewed confiscations of Tory property; some States 
borrowed abroad; lands were sold; and in the commercial States 
duties returned large sums. In 1785-86 a fresh demand for paper 
money, inspired by the prevailing hard times, swept the country, 
but was conquered before it had done great damage. 

Nearly all the Colonies had issued much paper money in the 
eighteenth century, with results so bad that after 1740, when a pound 
in the New England currency was worth one-fifth, in South Caro¬ 
lina currency one-eighth, and in North Carolina currency one-four¬ 
teenth a specie pound, Parliament had tried to check the emissions. 
Thoughtful colonists were as much opposed as thoughtful English¬ 
men to excessive issues; and in 1764 Parliament forbade legal tender 
emissions altogether. Yet paper money of various kinds remained 
common. In 1774 some $12,000,000 was estimated to be current. 
The issues were of two main kinds, and Pennsylvania had exempli¬ 
fied the best method. This was to print a certain sum to circulate a 

8 Amer. State Papers, “Finance,” I, 71- See Doyle, “English Colonies in Amer.,” 
London ed. 1907, V, 124 ff; Beer, “British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765, p. 179 ff. 


480 THE AMERICAN STATES 

certain period, say ten years; to issue the bills as interest-bearing 
loans to individuals, amply secured by lands; to repay annually a 
certain fraction of each loan, one-tenth if redemption was provided 
for in a decade; and meanwhile to give the treasury the benefit of 
the interest. This paper, a legal tender, usually passed at face value. 
Pownall wrote enthusiastically that it provided “the true Pactolian 
stream, which converts all into gold that is washed by it.” 10 The 
older plan, more widely followed and more easily carried out, was to 
issue bills simply to pay governmental obligations, pledging certain 
taxes to redeem them. The paper of one Colony circulated little in 
any other, so that in 1775 the Massachusetts authorities had to give 
special orders to secure the acceptance of Connecticut and Rhode 
Island money. 

When the Colonies turned after Lexington to paper issues, they 
expected the disagreement with the mother land to be temporary, and 
hoped that the short contest would not prove expensive. The contem¬ 
porary writer Belknap attributes to this much of the colonists’ want 
of wisdom. “Bills of credit were emitted with no other fund for their 
redemption than taxation, and that deferred to distant periods. It 
was imagined that the justice of our cause, and the united ardor and 
patriotism of the people, would preserve the value of these bills 
during the contest which we were very sanguine would be short.” 11 
No one, as another annalist of the time, Ramsay, states, believed at 
the outset but that the bills would be redeemed promptly and at full 
value. 12 The machinery for raising adequate sums by taxation ex¬ 
isted in no Colony. Governor George Clinton told the legislators at 
Kingston in September, 1777, that “The want of an organized gov¬ 
ernment has hitherto rendered it impossible to make any provision 
for sinking the money which the war has obliged us to issue,” and 
other executives could make the same complaint. Had the machinery 
existed, it would have been crippled in some States by the British 
or Tories, and if it had existed uncrippled, the people would have 
been unwilling to make effective use of it. The rattle of musketry 
near Boston was quickly followed by the rattle of printing presses 
from New Hampshire to South Carolina. The hard fact is that, 
under the circumstances, bills offered the only practicable means 
of financing the war. The first paper emission authorized by a 

10 “Admin, of the Colonies,” 4th ed., 186. 

11 Farmer’s Edition, 378. 

““Hist, of S. Ca.,” II, 172-73. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 481 

revolutionary authority was ordered by the Provincial Congress of 
Massachusetts on May 20, 1775, amounting to £26,000. 

In many States it is difficult to arrive at the total of emissions of 
paper. Issues of bills of credit would sometimes be authorized, but 
not fully made; a new issue would often replace an old one; con¬ 
fusing distinctions were drawn between bills of credit and treasury 
notes; government promises to pay, as certificates issued in return 
for loans, for commandeered property, and in lieu of army pay, 
passed like paper money and were substantially identical with it. It 
must again be remembered that the States had no uniform currency. 
“The ideas annexed to a pound, a shilling, and pence are almost 
as various as the States themselves,” said Robert Morris. The Span¬ 
ish dollar in Georgia meant five shillings, in Virginia and New Eng¬ 
land six, in North Carolina and New York eight, in South Carolina 
thirty-two and a half, and elsewhere, seven and a half. 13 To com¬ 
pare the financial dealings of one State with those of another is a 
vexatiously complicated task. 

The specie value of the currency issued by the States during the 
Revolution was estimated by Jefferson in 1786 at $36,000,000, or 
just as much as the specie value of the Continental currency. The 
debts contracted by the States he placed at $25,000,000, as against 
$43,000,000 contracted by the national government—his estimate 
of the whole cost of winning our independence being $140,000,000. 
Hildreth, writing a generation after Jefferson, placed the total cost 
of the Revolution much higher—$170,000,000—but the share of the 
States markedly lower. The States, he computed, raised $30,000,000 
through taxes and repudiated paper, and contracted $26,000,000 in 
debts. Hamilton, the best authority, ventured no estimate of the 
amounts of State paper issued and repudiated, but placed the State 
debt in 1789 at $2i,ooo,ooo. 14 Though some States have a fairly 
good record as regards paper issues, and some a record of gross 
folly, it is not easy in view of their different situations to apportion 
praise or blame. Connecticut suffered little from British invasion, 
Pennsylvania much; Massachusetts was populous, rich, and free from 
the enemy after the first few months, while North Carolina was poor, 
of mixed population, and for the last years of the war heavily over¬ 
run by the British. 

»Amer. State Papers, “Finance,” I ioi ff. 

14 Bullock, C. J., “Finances of the U. S., i 74 ‘ 75 » 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


482 

Nearly all the States—North Carolina was an outstanding excep¬ 
tion—made their most indiscreet issues in the first two and a half 
years of the war, before the close of 1777. Most of them then tried 
to check their emissions, and a number were able to do so com¬ 
pletely. The sad teachings of experience were reinforced by urgings 
from responsible sources. In the last days of 1776 representatives 
of the four New England States met at Providence to debate fiscal 
questions. They resolved, in the words of the endorsement voted by 
the Rhode Island House, “that no further emissions of paper bills 
be made, but that the several treasuries be supplied by taxes, or by 
borrowing the necessary sums, to be repaid in three years or sooner 
...” In an emergency, they would approve the striking off of 
bills for three years or less, supported by taxes. In midsummer of 
the next year another convention of New England commissioners 
was held at Springfield, Mass., and again exerted its influence to 
check the flood of paper. 15 Meanwhile, on February 15, 1777, Con¬ 
gress recommended that the States stop printing bills, recall those 
already circulating, and rely for a paper medium wholly on the sup¬ 
ply authorized by Congress, and this wise demand—it was hardly 
less—was several times repeated, as on November 22, 1777. Under 
the latter date, Congress again called for the withdrawal of State 
issues of paper, and counselled the States to “provide for the ex¬ 
igencies of war and the support of government by taxes levied within 
the year,” or other expedients. 16 

New England turned toward the safe path first of all. Connecticut 
made her first emission of paper money in April, 1775, when the 
Assembly voted £50,000 in bills of credit for two years without in¬ 
terest. The next month £50,000 more was voted for three years, 
and in July, together with a third emission of the same size, the leg¬ 
islators were wise enough to levy a tax for its redemption. Other 
votes of paper money followed, until by June, 1776, the total author¬ 
ized was £260,000, and with this the State stopped short; it was 
high time, for the bills had depreciated so fast that they were now 
being refused. Resort was had to force laws, the Legislature in 
October, 1776, making both Continental and Connecticut bills legal 
tender, and ordering that anyone who tried to depreciate them 
should forfeit the full value of the money he received and the prop- 

18 N. Y. representatives were present at the second meeting; Records State R. I., 
VIII, 48; 97-98; 236. 

10 Journals Cont. Cong., VII, 125; IX, 953 ff.; Bolles, I, 148. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 483 

erty he offered for sale. This legislation was accompanied by laws 
setting the prices of various commodities, and was of course a total 
failure. But the State wisely refused to put forth any more paper 
money until in 1780 it became possible to do so in lieu of the new 
Continental bills to which it was entitled. Provision had been made 
for the redemption of all paper by taxes, and after February 1, 1778, 
it was called in as fast as possible in order to give a clear field, as 
Congress requested, to Continental currency. 

Even little Rhode Island, whose course later was all that it should 
not have been, almost ceased the issue of paper money early in 1777. 
The State suffered greatly from invasion. Newport, the metropolis 
and seat of wealth and commerce, was in British hands from Decem¬ 
ber, 1776, till October, 1779, and the whole coast was under British 
guns or open to British marauding parties. In Providence during 
1777 the destitute refugees mounted from scores into hundreds, and 
that year Rhode and Block Islands, and Conanicut, were exempted 
from taxes on all personal property except cattle. In the two years 
*775-76 no less than £152,000 in paper was issued, though the State’s 
population did not exceed 50,000. The first bills, all too generously, 
carried two and a half per cent interest, and were redeemable by 
taxes at the end of two and five year periods. As it was learned that 
other States were striking off paper that bore no interest, provision 
was made for their hurried recall, and later emissions carried no 
interest. In December, 1776, the legislature mustered up courage 
to vote a tax of £40,000, and thenceforth, with one minor exception 
the following May, it stood by its resolve to print no more bills of 
credit during the war. It repeatedly borrowed upon treasury notes, 
usually in anticipation of taxes, but it committed no grosser errors. 
The borrowings, the taxes, the ravages of the British, and the 
steady depreciation of State and Continental paper, left Rhode 
Island financially prostrate in 1781, and in the fall of that year 
State paper ceased to be legal tender. 

Massachusetts and New Hampshire also have a fairly creditable 
record, for after the initial years of war both ceased to debase their 
currency and began taxing their people energetically, though both 
also resorted to heavy borrowings. The Bay State during 1776 
made six emissions of bills of credit, totalling £370,042, and then 
ceased, while New Hampshire made her last regular emission of 
bills in the spring of 1778. Both issued some of the 40 to 1 paper 


484 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


in 1780, and that was all. But Massachusetts continued till the 
end of the war to float heavy and constant loans by means of treas¬ 
ury notes. That is, the treasurer received larger and larger sums 
of paper money in exchange for notes bearing six per cent, interest, 
and secured by special tax levies. These levies made the nominal 
burden on the taxpayers heavier and heavier, until in 1780 no less 
than £11,200,000 was demanded from them; but the actual weight, 
because of the steady depreciation of money and the growing diffi¬ 
culty of collecting taxes, never became crushing. Immediately after 
Yorktown an excise act was passed to assure the payment of in¬ 
terest on the State securities. The New Hampshire legislature was 
forced to abandon paper by the same causes which operated else¬ 
where. By the end of the second year of the war it had issued 
£113,600 in bills, while a flood of counterfeits had appeared, so 
that the money was fast becoming worthless. A legislative com¬ 
mittee promptly drew up an improved plan for taxation, and that 
same year (1777) £40,000 was levied. 17 

In the Middle States we find the same general record. Heavy 
emissions of paper in 1775-76, extending in some instances to a 
later date, were followed by a sharp check and a recourse to taxa¬ 
tion, which was by no means as heavy as it should have been, and 
which was accompanied by borrowing. 

Pennsylvania had the advantage of wealth, but the disadvantages 
of a radical government and a population largely disaffected. The 
first issue of paper money was in June, 1775, and was known as 
resolve money. Before the year ended no less than £137,000 had 
been voted, more followed in 1776, and in March, 1777, another 
£200,000 was struck off. Then emissions were wisely stopped until 
the spring of 1780. Depreciation was of course rapid. In a little 
over twenty months, nearly half a million pounds had been issued, 
in addition to a mass of old provincial money still circulating, and 
the torrent of Continental bills. As elsewhere, the State paper 
was a legal tender for debts, and dishonest men seized with avidity 
upon the temporary opportunity it offered of discharging them 
cheaply. The prostration of trade in 1779 evoked an inquiry by 
special city committees, which found that the unwillingness of farm¬ 
ers and merchants to exchange goods for rag money was crippling 

17 Massachusetts Acts and Laws, 1775-80, 61, 64, 71, 74, 84, 96, 99, 101 126 

et passim; New Hampshire Province, State, and Town Papers, VIII, 520, 588 722 
779, 823. Lotteries were repeatedly used by Massachusetts to raise money. ’ ’ 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 485 


the supply of the army. Though less effectively than in Connecti¬ 
cut or Massachusetts, the authorities turned to high taxation. 

New York also threw much paper into circulation in 1775-76, 
so that by the time the State Government was well established the 
load of obligations was alarming. Governor Clinton in September, 
1777, told the Legislature that its failure to provide a sinking fund 
had burdened the people with debt and was striking at the very 
root of the currency. Attempts at price regulation merely aggra¬ 
vated the evil. “The only effectual remedy is that of reducing the 
quantity of circulating medium by taxation,” he said, recommend¬ 
ing laws to this end. The legislators were willing to stop the emis¬ 
sions, but they viewed a reduction of the early issues by taxation 
with reluctance. There were no paper issues after 1777 until the 
40 to 1 bills appeared, and in 1778 an act was passed for cancelling 
all bills having a face value of a dollar or less. The Governor’s 
message of 1779 once more referred to the falling value of the 
paper currency, and the necessity of supplying a cure. A joint 
legislative committee thereupon reported that “frequent and heavy 
taxes equally laid on all real and personal property, and such vol¬ 
untary loans as might be granted to the United States,” would pre¬ 
vent the further issue of paper and restore its credit. Tardily and 
half-heartedly, New York took the proper road. This year the tax- 
bill called for $2,500,000, and the Senate tried unsuccessfully to 
make it $3,500,000; while in 1780 provision was made for the 
collection within nine months of $7,500,000 in the depreciated cur¬ 
rency of the time. Maryland’s financial history was substantially 
similar. 18 

The South witnessed the greatest abuses of State credit, and had 
the least success in the imposition and collection of taxes. The 
economic shock of the war was especially grave in the section which 
depended upon the export of tobacco and other bulky agricultural 
products. Moreover, just as the thirteen States were turning 


18 For Pennsylvania’s paper money record see Laws of Pennsylvania, 1918 ed., I, 
chanters 741 896, etc.; for the report of the city committee on trade in 1779 see the 
Pa Packet Sent 2S 1779. New York’s fiscal measures are contained in Laws 1 777 - 
fsox ed. '1886-87, I; consult the index. For Maryland’s paper money laws see 
Scharf’s “Maryland,” II, 476-480, and the published laws for each year. The statute 
relating to the 40-to-i bills is Chapter 7, June session Laws of 1780. Maryland s 
revolutionary government at first raised funds by subscription from the various 
counties, and by taxes. Then repeated emissions of paper were made until by the 
close of 1777 no less than $1,077,000 in bills was outstanding; and the issues were 
halted. When Congress called in the Continental bills at the 40-toi rate, Maryland 
provided that all State money should similarly be redeemed by a new emission at the 
same rate; and amply secured it by real property. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


486 

towards improved financial measures, the South became the seat 
of the active fighting. 

Virginia’s policy was to authorize enormous issues of treasury 
notes, virtually identical with bills of credit, and secured by no real 
provision for redemption by taxes. The authorizations soon be¬ 
came huge. As early as the spring of 1777 we find one for a million 
dollars; between the fall of 1780 and the spring of 1781 they aggre¬ 
gated £45,000,000. Just what quantity of State notes went into 
circulation it is impossible to say, but the sum was very great, and 
it was swollen by counterfeiting. The inevitable consequence en¬ 
sued—the obligations became almost valueless. Just after the 
surrender of Cornwallis, this fact was recognized by a sweeping 
measure of repudiation, which annulled all the State’s fine promises 
to pay in full, and impoverished the Virginians who were patriotic 
enough to have exchanged valuable property for treasury notes. 
All holders were bade to bring their paper in within a specified 
time, and receive a loan office certificate for one dollar in return for 
every $1,000 surrendered. A millionaire in paper money, in other 
words, would get $1,000! We may contrast this step with Mary¬ 
land’s redemption of all her State money at the 40 to 1 rate used 
by Congress, and with Connecticut’s scrupulous honoring of all 
obligations. 

North Carolina’s financial history bears much the same appear¬ 
ance of recklessness, though we must remember that in the last 
years of the war she and Virginia, trampled by contending armies, 
were in an unfortunate position. The Provincial Congress threw 
$125,000 into circulation in the fall of 1775, and in April, 1776, 
added $250,000 more, the total amounting to £150,000. The State 
government made a brave effort throughout 1777 to support the war 
by the proceeds of taxes and loan offices, but circumstances proved 
too strong for the legislators. In August, 1778, they placed £830,000 
in circulation, of which £630,000 was to be used in redeeming issues 
by the Colony and the Provincial Congress. One emission followed 
another until the total for the years 1775-80 inclusive was no less 
than $6,500,000. In the last stages of the war the distribution of 
certificates for various treasury purposes became prodigious, and in 
the single year 1781 the sum of $26,250,000 was authorized in 
bounties to volunteers. North Carolina’s whole population did not 
exceed 260,000, and it was a poor population, so that when all 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 487 

allowance is made for depreciation, these amounts remain shocking. 19 

We know that the people of South Carolina were unfortunately 
circumstanced for five years before the Revolution. Heavy impor¬ 
tations of slaves and luxuries—3,000 to 5,000 negroes annually just 
before the war—had drained away the specie, and little gold or 
silver circulated beyond the immediate vicinity of Charleston; 
while no emission of paper had taken place since 1746, save a very 
small one in 1770. Barter was necessarily substituted for trade 
with money in many places. Just before the war two expedients 
were hit upon to lessen the inconvenience which this entailed in 
business. The Assembly clerk in 1774 gave certificates to the 
public creditors stating that their demands had been recognized as 
valid, and so sound was the government’s credit that the certificates 
passed as money. Again, five men of wealth, Henry Middleton, 
Roger Smith, Miles Brewton, Benjamin Huger, and Thomas Lynch, 
in April, 1775 , issued joint and several notes of hand in convenient 
denominations payable to the bearer, and these readily went into 
circulation at face value. 

The first patriot emission of paper money in South Carolina took 
place in June, 1775 , and the last during the active conflict was made 
four years later, in the spring of 1779 . Within this period the issue 
of more than £10,000,000 was authorized, but much of it was con¬ 
ditional upon the failure of appeals for loans, and Ramsay tells us 
that only £ 7 , 817,553 in ostensible face value really went into cir¬ 
culation. 20 We should bear in mind that the pound in South Caro¬ 
lina was worth less than one-fourth as much as the same denom¬ 
ination in North Carolina and New York, and about one-seventh as 
much as the pound sterling; and when we make allowance also for 
the rapid depreciation, the real value of the emissions at the time 
they appeared was about £480,000 sterling in specie. This sum, 
however, was itself large for a State of small population and an 
empty treasury. During nearly two years, or until April, 1777 , the 
paper sustained its value, but then fell rapidly, and with it declined 
credit, financial stability, and the vigor with which the war was 
being prosecuted. After the beginning of 1778 , the Continental 
bills became more and more common, and as in other sections, 
accelerated the drop of the State bills. Legislation was enacted 

19 For Virginia see Hening’s Statutes, IX, 6i, 286, 456; Z, 31, 241, 279, 321, 399, 
456. A wealth of material on all phases of North Carolina’s financial history is to be 
found in the N. C. State Records, XXIV, covering 1777-1788 inclusive. 

20 Ramsay’s “South Carolina,” II, 171. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


488 

to control the price of goods, and the paper was still held to be a 
legal tender, but nothing could check its decline. 

After the legislators in Charleston stopped the emission of paper 
early in 1779, taxation and the floating of popular loans were relied 
upon until the British conquered most of the State. Then all 
financial provision necessarily lapsed save the commandeering of 
army supplies. Where the British flag waved, the royal money 
circulated, and elsewhere little need for money existed, buying and 
selling having almost ceased. “Those who had the necessaries of 
life freely divided with'those who were destitute. Luxuries or even 
comforts were not contemplated. To make out to live was the 
ultimate aim of most.” 21 South Carolina’s paper by the final year 
of fighting was almost worthless, and it became necessary for Gov¬ 
ernor Rutledge, under the extraordinary powers given him by the 
legislature, to suspend the laws making it a legal tender. 

In all sections of America, indeed, the steady depreciation of 
paper money took place. In Boston butter at one time sold for 
$12 a pound, and a barrel of flour for $1,575, while frugal Samuel 
Adams paid $2,000 for a suit of clothes. 22 In Philadelphia one 
trader declared in the Packet that having bought a hogshead of 
sugar and sold it for more than it cost him, the proceeds would 
buy only a tierce. The people of Fairfax County and the town of 
Alexandria, Virginia, in 1777 protested to the legislature against 
the terrific price of commodities. R. H. Lee wrote Patrick Henry 
a year later that already the continental issues exceeded seven¬ 
fold the sum necessary for a medium of trade, that the State emis¬ 
sions had greatly increased the evil, and that the counterfeiting was 
still more injurious. In June, 1779, John Tazewell believed that 
“the amazing depreciation of our paper currency seems to threaten 
us with speedy ruin.” 23 Early in 1781 North Carolina officers 
had to pay $250 in their currency for a day’s labor and $12,000 for 
a single horse, while the Assembly formally recognized a depreciation 
of the currency to one-ninth its face value. 

In a number of States south of New England which ceased issuing 
paper in 1777 or 1778, the crisis of the war in 1780-81 forced a sec¬ 
ond marked resort to it. The demands of Congress were greater 
and greater; the population, denied an overseas market for crops, 

21 Ramsay’s “South Carolina,” II, 182-183. For South Carolina’s paper emissions 
see Statutes at Large, Cooper Ed., IV, 360, 361, 393, 461, 508. 

22 Cf. Sumner, “Hist. Am. Currency,” 46, 47. 

28 Henry, “Henry,” II, 10-13; N. Ca. State Papers, XIV, 309-10. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 489 


grew rebellious in the face of taxation; sources of loans had been 
largely exhausted; and much of the South was devastated. Gov¬ 
ernment after government saw no other way of obtaining funds. 

This fact was evident before Congress adopted the plan in 1780 of 
dividing part of a new issue of $10,000,000 among the States. 
Connecticut issued £190,000 in bills of credit, but this, pursuant 
to Roger Sherman’s advice, 24 was in lieu of the State’s share of 
the new Continental bills. Moreover, the issue was promptly re¬ 
deemed. The New England States showed continued caution in 
dealing with paper money. Thus Rhode Island, the most indiscreet 
in later years, which was entitled to £130,000 of the new “forty to 
one” money, took only a part of it. Rhode Islanders saw that the 
state was not only responsible for the redemption of the issue, but 
that it would have to pay interest to the holders. Massachusetts 
likewise shrewdly refused a part of her quota. But elsewhere in 
the Union, the only recourse seemed to be to the printing press. 

Pennsylvania’s resort to paper money in 1781 was a picturesque 
and instructive episode. The amazing depreciation of older emis¬ 
sions had forced the Legislature, in the spring of 1781, to establish 
an official scale to show what constituted a just satisfaction for debts. 
But not all its former blind faith in paper money was knocked out of 
that body. In March, 1780, the Assembly had authorized the issue 
of £100,000 upon the security of lands in Philadelphia and of Prov¬ 
ince Island, all belonging to the State—the security causing the 
bills to be called “island money.” Just a year later, against the 
earnest protests of Robert Morris, General Mifflin, and sixteen other 
influential citizens, an additional £500,000 was authorized; of which 
£100,000 was to be redeemed annually for five years. Anyone who 
refused to accept these bills in payment of debt or for salable goods, 
was subject to rigid penalties. The conservative Anti-Constitution¬ 
alists stood fast in opposition to the measure, and published an elo¬ 
quent denunciation of it; and the sequel soon justified their attitude. 25 

An effort was made to float the first part of the huge emission in a 
way to inspire confidence in it. On May n the Executive Council 
issued a proclamation stating that one-third of the last £500,000 had 
already been printed, and taken by State troops, that goods had 


24 Trumbull Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc. Library, March 23, 1780, et seq.; Cf. Trum¬ 
bull’s “Trumbull. 243-44. . ... , , . , 

25 This Legislature also forbade for six months suits to collect large debts contracted 
before 1777. For paper money issues, see Laws of Pa., 1810 Ed., I, Chs. 896, 928; 
II, Ch. 934- 


490 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


been sold for the bills to the public commissioners, and that any 
reduction in the value of the paper would be a public calamity. It 
asked the people to accept the money and promised that no more 
would be issued until the Legislature again met. The Constitutional¬ 
ists held a mass-meeting which voted its approbation of this re¬ 
quest. The principal business men of Philadelphia, however, simply 
agreed at a general meeting that they would take the new paper at 
the rates prevailing on May i—which they did not long do. The 
Council kept its promise to issue no more than the £166,666 already 
in circulation; and when the Assembly met again, the sound-money 
party labored energetically to obtain some guarantee of the ultimate 
redemption of the outstanding paper. The earlier March issue of 
£100,000 of “island money” rose to par when the city lots belonging 
to the Penn family, with Province Island, were sold to provide a 
redemption fund, and those who had bought it at a specie ratio of 
eight to one made a handsome profit, for in due time they were paid. 

But the later and larger issue depreciated rapidly and irremediably. 
The severe penalties prescribed by law for refusal to accept the money 
at par had no effect. It fell steadily until it required anywhere from 
$250 to $300 to buy one dollar in gold—this depreciation being less 
than that which had overtaken the Continental bills, but sufficient 
to make the money worthless for trade. The Council finally recog¬ 
nized its failure by ordering that the paper be received in payment of 
debts to the State at 175 to 1. In the early fall of 1781, the bills 
disappeared, and gold and silver amazingly took their place. Pres¬ 
ident Reed wrote the State’s loan agent in Europe that the rag 
money had found “an honorable, and what you will perhaps think 
more extraordinary, a peaceful exit.” A timely trade with the West 
Indies in flour, springing up immediately, gave the farmers a market 
and brought large quantities of hard money into the State. 

Maryland’s experience paralleled Pennsylvania’s. In 1781, find¬ 
ing resources for the war and a sufficient circulating medium alike 
wanting, the Legislature voted £200,000 in bills of credit, redeemable 
within four years. This act was not wholly culpable, for it was 
possible to pledge large amounts of confiscated British property for 
the discharge of the debt, and much of it was sold by auction at 
once, while additional means were found to bolster the State’s credit. 
Most Assemblymen pledged themselves to take the bills, at least 
in stated quantities, at par; subscription papers, supported by pub- 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 491 

lie meetings and local committees, were circulated throughout the 
State, and it was understood that a subscriber’s property was pledged 
for his subscription. But Americans everywhere had lost confidence 
in such emissions. 

“It was impossible for it to succeed; opinion was wanted,” said 
the Maryland Gazette succinctly. “Notwithstanding every position 
they had made, it scarcely passed as specie at all between individuals. 
Some few creditors, indeed, who could not violate so recent and 
solemn an engagement, received it with reluctance. A few merchants, 
of more than common public spirit, sold goods for it at the old 
price; others . . . raised the price . . .; and the farmers and plant¬ 
ers generally would not sell their commodities at all.” 26 Three 
months after the bills went into circulation, they had enormously 
depreciated. They were by law a legal tender, and the creditors 
who had to receive them suffered greatly. “Cheating became, as it 
were, a reputable business, being practised by the representatives of 
the people and authorized by law.” An enactment to limit the price 
of goods, and restrictions upon exportation, increased the feeling 
of conservative men that they were being ruled by “blockheads and 
knaves,” and by laws “which mark their framers for cheats or 
ignorant statesmen, and which stamp indelible disgrace upon a 
whole community.” 27 This was precisely the feeling of the con¬ 
servative business men of the Anti-Constitutionalist party in Penn¬ 
sylvania. 

New Jersey in the spring of 1780 authorized the issue of £225,000 
of the new forty-to-one bills; besides this, later in the year the legis¬ 
lature ordered a new emission of £30,000 in bills of credit. Prudent 
Virginians regretted toward the end of 1780 that “our only resource 
is the wretched one of more paper money.” 28 In 1781, when the 
theatre of the final scenes of war, the State authorized what would 
seem incredible emissions if we did not remember the extreme de¬ 
preciation—first an issue of £15,000,000, and later one for £20,000,- 
000. Though this money was not a legal tender for debt, it was 
receivable in payment of taxes, and proved later very embarrassing 
to the State. North Carolina threw no paper money proper into 
circulation in 1781 and 1782, contenting herself with issuing certifi- 

28 December 2, 1784; see also Pa. Mercury, December 24, 1784. This paper was 
emitted on security of double the value in lands. Laws of 1781, May session, Ch. 23. 

27 Md. Journal, in a denunciatory sketch of the whole paper money history of the 
State, September 17, 1782. 

28 Rives, “Madison,” I, 278-79. 


492 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


cates. But in the spring of 1783 the Legislature voted £100,000 in 
bills for redeeming old money, paying the Continental line, and de¬ 
fraying the costs of government; to support this issue, confiscated 
property was set aside. Other States participated in this general 
but temporary reversion toward paper money near the end of the 
war. 

III. Taxation and Other Revenues 

When the States in 1777-78 first abandoned or reduced their reck¬ 
less paper issues, they had to turn, however reluctantly, to such 
direct levies as the people had never felt. Congress in its message 
to the State governments upon finances in November, 1777, urged 
that property-owners be heavily assessed. “Hitherto spared from 
taxes, let them now with a cheerful heart contribute according to 
their circumstances.” In the following May it reiterated the ad¬ 
vice. “Is there a country upon earth which has such resources for 
the payment of her debts as America? Such an extensive territory? 
So fertile, so blessed in climate and production? Surely there is 
none.” Why, then, the disastrous depreciation of paper money? 
“Because no taxes have been imposed to carry on the war.” 

Taxation is now such an inevitable accompaniment of civilized 
government, and in most lands high taxation, that it is hard for us 
to place ourselves in the idyllic age when leaders were exhorting the 
yeomen, shopkeepers, and shippers to submit to the tax-gatherer. 
When John Adams declared that “taxation as deep as possible is 
the only radical cure,” and Roger Sherman that he saw no means 
of supporting the patriot cause and its currency “but by taxing to 
the full amount of our expenditures after having emitted a sufficient 
sum for a medium of trade,” there were few who agreed with them 
that adequate taxation would be the cheapest way out. The annalist 
Ramsay was one, saying that in South Carolina “a great deal might 
have been done at an early period to support the [paper] money.” 
Here and there an enlightened community responded with cordiality 
to the proposals of the statesmen, but only here and there. George 
Mason, versed in political economy as well as political science, in¬ 
duced his neighbors of Fairfax County to call upon the Virginia Leg¬ 
islature in the fall of 1777 for vigorous taxation, and to declare that 
the people would readily submit to it. Already New England had 
led the way, Massachusetts in the previous spring having ordered 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 493 

taxes laid to bring £455,000 lawful money into the treasury. Some 
wise Bay State towns in 1777 objected to the policy of calling in 
bills of credit on loans, and asked to have them sunk by taxes; so 
that a law was enacted allowing any town to lessen its proportion 
of the public debt by taxing itself if it chose. 29 

Taxes had been low in the Colonies, and in some they had been 
almost unfelt. Most of the provincial governments had cost little— 
Rhode Island’s about £2,000 a year just before the war. In the gov¬ 
ernmental disorganization at the beginning of the Revolution, the 
taxpayers found it easy to evade their obligations. In Connecticut 
at the close of the year of independence, the C our ant remarked that 
taxes had been “none, or next to none, for some time,” and were only 
beginning “in a low degree to take place.” Near the end of the war 
the New York legislators apologized for the heaviness of the money 
burdens they were laying on the people, but pointed out that the taxes 
were lower than might be expected, and that the war had been 
carried through several campaigns at great expense before any taxes 
were collected. 30 At first taxes were hard to obtain because men 
were unused to them; later because of the ravages of war and the 
effect of paper-depreciation upon credit and trade; and always in 
some degree because the States had no sound machinery for tax- 
collection. 

But money was hard to raise for another reason also; throughout 
the Revolution nothing grieved statesmen like the inferior sensitive¬ 
ness of the patriotic nerve when compared with the pocket nerve. 
In Pennsylvania, during the darkest days of the British conquest 
of the South, a certain meeting of the Legislature was expected to 
show that a fine spirit of self-sacrifice was abroad. Thomas Paine 
uttered a cry of indignation over what it really showed. “What 
particularly added to the affliction was that so many of the mem¬ 
bers, instead of spiriting up their constituents to the most nervous 
exertions, came to the Assembly furnished with petitions to be ex- 

20 See Ramsay’s “South Carolina,” II, 178. The long, interesting, and important 
call by Fairfax County for direct taxation is in the Md. Gazette, October 28, 1777. 
Other States took admiring notice of the action of Massachusetts; see Md. Journal, 
November 18, 1777. The law of 1777 is in Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1775-80, p. 150. 

80 Cf. Governor Clinton’s call for taxation in September, 1778; Messages from the 
Governors, II, 52. New Jersey began heavy taxation in the fall of 1778; Mulford, 
“Hist. N. J.,” 457 ff. In South Carolina taxation, apart from a levy on polls, had 
been practically unknown. For the apology of the New York Legislature mentioned 
above, see Assembly Journal, 1871, 63 ff. Dr. Franklin, examined by a committee of 
the House of Commons in 1766, and asked if the Americans paid considerable taxes, 
replied, “Certainly many, and very heavy taxes.” But this was when the burden of 
the Seven Years’ War was still great. “Examination of Dr. B. Franklin,” Phila., 
1766. 


494 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


empt from paying taxes. How the public measures were to be carried 
on, the country defended, and the army recruited . . . when the only 
resource, and that not half sufficient, that of taxes, should be relaxed 
to almost nothing, was a matter too gloomy to look at.” 31 Presi¬ 
dent Reed wrote Washington that the rich and not the poor were 
shrinking from the burden of the war. Many wealthy men con¬ 
cealed part of their property, or refused to declare it, or declared it 
and then evaded payment. Outside the path of the armies, he said, 
the country was richer than when the first shots were fired at Lex¬ 
ington, but the selfishness of Whigs and the opposition of Tories, 
conjoined with the long disuse of taxes and the quarrels of party, 
had half paralyzed the amassing of public funds. 32 

Jefferson estimated the taxable property of Virginia at a hundred 
million dollars, and declared at the end of the Revolution that a tax 
of one per cent, upon it would, in comparison with anything yet 
laid, be deemed almost crushing. Yet in the dark spring of 1781 
the various burdens of the war led to outbreaks of violence in the 
Old Dominion. In Hampshire County there was rioting by those 
who wished, in the words of one State agent, “to be clear of taxes 
and draughts.” On the Eastern Shore efforts to collect tax-arrears 
and enlist reluctant drafted men caused disturbances that continued 
intermittently for months and required militia interference. 

To outline in detail the tax laws of all thirteen States is a task 
that happily we need not undertake. It is sufficient to lay down 
certain salient facts in the history of State taxation during the war 
period. The first is that the initial levies, which in most States 
were made during 1777, but in a few were deferred till 1778, were 
timid. In South Carolina, for example, where nothing but the poll 
tax had been really felt, less than one-third of a dollar was asked 
in 1777 for each negro and each one hundred acres. “A fear of 
alarming the people, and too sanguine hopes of a speedy peace,” 
as Ramsay says, “induced the legislature to begin moderately; 
more with a view of making an experiment than of raising adequate 
supplies.” 33 The second outstanding fact is that the principal 
reliance of the States was placed upon the general property tax 
and poll tax, with excise and income taxes in a decidedly secondary 
position. Virginia, it should be noted, had long depended mainly 

81 “Writings,” II, 150. 

82 Bolles, ‘‘Pennsylvania,” II, 72. 

33 Ramsay’s “South Carolina,” II, 182. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 495 


on import taxes, and the general property tax was one of the war’s 
gifts to her. 34 A third fact is that in passing wartime tax laws the 
States found it almost impossible to keep pace with the depreciation 
of money; before the revenue had reached the treasury, it had 
dwindled to an inadequate value. Finally, we discover a marked 
tendency to broaden the field of taxation—to place a special levy 
on articles of luxury like carriages, to get at income, and to place 
duties on commerce. State taxation before 1783 was not a success 
in any proper meaning of the word; it did not meet State needs. 
But the thirteen governments learned valuable lessons from their 


varied experience. 

Some of the States began with much simpler laws than others. 
Pennsylvania in the spring of 1777 was content with a tax of five 
shillings in the hundred pounds on all estates real and personal, a 
poll tax, and certain excise and license taxes. New York distin¬ 
guished between real estate and personal estate, laying in the spring 
of 1778 a tax of threepence in the pound on the former and one and 
a half pence on the latter. South Carolina’s first tax was ten shill¬ 
ings for every slave or hundred acres, five shillings for every hun¬ 
dred pounds in town realty, and five shillings for every hundred 
pounds at interest, in tradesman’s stock, and in profits of profes¬ 
sional men or tradesmen. The principal item in Maryland’s tax 
law of the spring of 1777 was a general property levy of ten shillings 
in the hundred pounds. But Virginia that fall enacted a more com¬ 
plex measure. The Richmond legislators levied a general prop¬ 
erty tax of ten shillings in the hundred pounds, and a like tax on 
cash capital; a tax of two shillings in the pound on annuities or 
income from money at interest; a tax of ten shillings in the hundred 
pounds on salaried income; a poll tax of five shillings on every 
tithable, with certain exceptions, above twenty-one; fourpence a 
head on all neat cattle; an export tax of ten shillings on every 
hogshead of tobacco; and excise and license taxes. This remark¬ 
ably comprehensive measure, later broadened to include taxes on 
luxuries and on more livestock, was the basis on which Virginia 


kept her finances till she had to turn to taxes in kind. 

A few instances will show how all the States, from Massachusetts 


to Georgia, were compelled to increase the tax rate to enormous 

37 «. (March 28, . 778 ); 

S. Ca Statutes 'at Large,'Cooper Ed., IV, 365 (Jan .6 J 777 ); Laws of Maryland, 
^ 777 , Feb. session, Chs. 21 and 22; Hening, IX, 349 (October, 1 777 )- 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


496 

amounts in an effort to keep abreast of the depreciation of paper. 
Maryland’s ten shilling tax of 1777 became twenty-five shillings in 
the hunred pounds the following year, £13 in 1779, and £25 in 
1780, when taxes in kind were introduced. South Carolina made 
three levies between the Declaration of Independence and the fall 
of Charleston four years later. We have said that the first was 
almost a third of a dollar for every slave and hundred-acre land- 
unit. The next, in 1778, was nominally ten times and actually twice 
as heavy; and the third, in 1779, was a tax of $20 in paper or about 
$1 in specie for every slave and hundred acres. In the fall of 1778 
the Virginia legislature had practically to treble the tax laid the 
previous autumn, and the next spring the poll tax on slaves rose to 
£5. Everywhere assessors tended to value property in pre-war 
money and collect taxes in war money. Unfortunately for tax¬ 
payers, they did not invariably follow this rule, and gross inequali¬ 
ties resulted. The Virginia legislature in 1779 complained that some 
officers had valued lands at the price they would fetch in gold and 
silver, others in paper bills; some had paid no attention to the rise 
in land values since 1771, others had allowed for it; and some had 
valued land at what it would bring if a whole county were sold at 
once, others at the price given in small sales. The injustice was 
glaring. 38 

In every section the difficulty of obtaining a true revenue in 
money, as paper became worthless and specie was hoarded, led to 
the collection of taxes in products of the soil or home manufactures. 
This development was most pronounced in the South after the 
British threat began to be pushed home, and it is interesting to 
trace it in some detail in North Carolina and Virginia. 

The North Carolina legislators in the spring of 1777 levied a 
general assessment of a half-pence in the pound on lands, lots, 
houses, slaves, money, stock in trade, horses, and cattle. Free 
adults who were worth less than a hundred pounds were ordered 
to pay four shillings as a special poll tax. The tax rate was steadily 
raised until in the spring 1780 it reached sixpence in the pound, 
and later that year, a few weeks after the crushing disaster at 
Camden, a specific provision tax was laid. Every hundred pounds’ 
worth of property was to pay a peck of maize, or a half peck of 

36 Laws of Maryland, 1778, March session, ch. 7, Oct. session, ch. 7; 1779, March 
session, ch. 11, July session, ch. 5, November session, ch. 35; 1780, March session, 
ch. 25, June session, ch. 7. S. Ca. Statutes at Large, Cooper ed. IV, 36s, 487. 407. 
528. Hening, Statutes, IX, 547, X, 9. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 497 

wheat, or five pounds of flour, or a peck of rough rice, or three 
pounds of pork, or four and a half pounds of beef. At the June 
session in 1781, when the war was at its most critical stage, with 
Cornwallis in Virginia, a combined money and specific provision 
tax was levied. Every pound of taxable property was to pay, in 
the debased currency of the time, four shillings tax, and every 
pound in money to pay fourpence. All single freemen having less 
than a thousand pounds’ worth of property were to pay £150 in 
currency. The supplementary provision tax was substantially as 
before, a slight reduction in the quantity of meat being allowed. In 
1782 a more nearly normal tax was levied, but in consideration of 
the scarcity of specie, the payers were allowed to offer three fourths 
of it in tobacco, hemp, deerskins, beeswax, tallow, indigo, flour, 
rice, pork, or linen. These commodities were carefully valued in the 
law—for example, Indian-dressed deerskins were to be worth three 
shillings a pound, pork seventy-five shillings a barrel, and indigo 
six shillings a pound. 

Virginia had turned earlier to taxation in kind, and had a terrible 
struggle to free her financial system from it. As early as the spring 
of 1779 every man and every able-bodied woman slave above six¬ 
teen was required, beginning the next year, to pay an annual tax of 
a bushel of wheat, or two bushels of com, rye, or barley, or ten 
pecks of oats, or fifteen pounds’ of hemp, or twenty-eight pounds 
of tobacco. Similar levies followed. When in the late autumn of 
1781 Patrick Henry fathered a new tax law, which levied a pound 
on every hundred pounds’ worth of land, two shillings on every 
horse and mule, threepence on neat cattle, five shillings on carriage 
wheels, and fifty pounds on the billiard tables when found in tav¬ 
erns, specie was quite unavailable. All the levy was made payable 
in tobacco, hemp, or flour, except the tax on land, of which half 
could be paid in tobacco or hemp and one tenth in Continentals of 
the new emission. The following spring deerskins, for the benefit 
of the West, were added to the list. 37 

Once having won this privilege, Virginia taxpayers refused to 
surrender it. A party arose, after the fighting ended, which tried 
to effect the permanent transfer of taxes to a specie basis, but it 

37 For North Carolina’s laws, see State Papers, XXIV; for the difficulties and waste 
attending the collection of “specifics” there, see F. M. Hubbard, Life of W. K. 
Davie,” 64 ff. For Virginia’s laws, see Hening, IX, 369, X, 79, 233 241 338, 490, 

501 X 66. In October, 1780, Virginia called upon the counties for fixed quotas of 
clothes,' provisions, and wagons, while the previous spring army impressments in any 
amount had been authorized. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


498 

waged an uphill fight. In the spring of 1783 the right of commuta¬ 
tion was repealed, but a vociferous clamor led to its revival that fall. 
It was then voted to drop the taxes in kind early in 1784, but cir¬ 
cumstances forbade that desirable step. In the autumn most of 
the counties west of the Blue Ridge had to be allowed to pay in 
hemp, and the people of the whole State had to be relieved of one- 
half the tax of 1785. Their poverty and the scarcity of specie seemed 
to make this imperative. In 1786, again when a paper-money agi¬ 
tation was with difficulty stifled, the legislature was determined at 
least to provide some easy “facility.” The whole tax of the cur¬ 
rent year was made dischargeable, by a heavy majority, in tobacco 
at a fixed valuation. Madison wrote Washington that he had sadly 
acquiesced, “as a prudential compliance with the clamor within 
doors and without, as a probable means of obviating more hurtful 
experiments.” But the reform forces resumed the struggle with 
better prospects as economic conditions improved. In 1787 to¬ 
bacco was receivable for only certain taxes, and the following year 
all taxes were required in the form of specie and warrants, a reduc¬ 
tion in the levy being conceded as a reward. Virginia was out of 
the woods at last. 38 

Other sections had a similar experience. At the northern extrem¬ 
ity of the nation, New Hampshire in 1782 voted a tax of £110,000 
upon polls and estates, to be paid in State certificates, or in rum, 
beef cattle, leather shoes (valued at six shillings apiece), yarn hose, 
cloth, felt hats, blankets, or wheat flour. Massachusetts four years 
later allowed the payment of arrears of taxes assessed previous to 
1784 in a long list of commodities, including potash, pearlash, tow 
cloth, cod oil, dried fish, and whalebone. The discontent that was 
producing Shays’s Rebellion required these emollients. New York 
in the spring of 1781 laid a tax payable in wheat. We find that 
Maryland took the plunge at about the same time as Virginia and 
North Carolina, By successive laws in 1780 she required the pay¬ 
ment the following year of a special provision levy of a bushel of 
wheat or twenty-five pounds of tobacco for every hundred pounds’ 
worth of property, and permitted meat, breadstuffs, and tobacco to 

38 Hening, XI, 289, 299, 540; XII, 258, 456; Henry, “Henry,” II, 169-172; H. B. 
Grigsby, “The Va. Fed. Conv.,” II, 204. An excellent sketch of Virginia’s financial 
history is to be found in the Va. Hist. Mag., X, by W. F. Dodd. There is no doubt 
that the collection of any part of the taxes in specie greatly stimulated emigration to 
the south and west. Even the rich counties of Cumberland and Buckingham presented 
petitions in the fall of 1789 stating that specie was too scarce, and the price of produce 
too low, to make possible the payment of taxes in hard money. See Rives “Madison ” 
II, 78-79- 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 499 

be offered also for the regular 1781 tax. At one time in Maryland 
the civil officers were allowed to draw their salaries in wheat, the 
Governor being allowed 4,500 bushels a year; and Virginia was 
compelled to pay her militia in tobacco, brigadier-generals receiving 
125 pounds a day and privates 7% pounds. 39 

Naturally, the States incurred great losses upon these taxes in 
kind. In Pennsylvania the farmers often insisted upon excessive 
valuations for their goods, or presented kinds of produce for which 
the State had little use. North Carolina found that much time 
was lost in collecting the “specifics,” especially in thinly-settled dis¬ 
tricts; and that it was difficult to transport the heavy articles and 
drive the livestock to points of collection that shifted with the army 
camps. Governor Burke complained after the fighting stopped that 
there was not a sufficient variety in the supplies, and that there 
was no system in the administration. In Virginia the loss from acci¬ 
dents and depreciation was lamented, as was the fact that collectors 
often speculated with the supplies, while the scarcity of money 
operated against the ready sale of provisions, so that they spoiled 
unused. There were districts in which the collectors, after covering 
fields with lowing herds and raising hillocks of flour, could not pay 
bills of a few pounds sterling in cash. As for Maryland, the sher¬ 
iffs and collectors were there accused in 1780 of some curious frauds. 
They bought up certificates for provisions, acceptable in paying 
taxes, at a discount, and turned them into the treasury instead of 
the money received from the people, which they pocketed. They 
also bought up tobacco of bad quality to pay the tobacco assessments 
of citizens who had fallen into arrears; and then they exacted ex¬ 
orbitant sums from these poor people to reimburse themselves. 40 

Having to build their tax system largely from the foundation up, 
amid the hurry and stress of war, the States found them wretchedly 


39 n H. Prov., State, and Town Papers, VIII, 9 27; Mass. Acts and Laws, 1786, 
604 (Nov. 8, 1786); Laws of N. Y. 1777-1801, I, March 27, 1781; Laws of Maryland, 
by years; Scharf’s “Maryland,” II, 476-480; Hening, X, 223. Payment in specifics 
was not always allowed in Maryland after 1783- ~ , 

4 o Calen dar Va. State Papers, III, 214, 323. See the matter indexed under Col. 
Davies in this volume for a vivid insight into the difficulty of collecting anything 
whatever of value from many Virginia counties in 1782-83. The Governor said in 
April, 1782, that there were but four shillings in the treasury, and no means of get¬ 
ting more; p. 133. Note the complaint of a writer in the Providence, R. I., Gazette, 
March 23, 1782 : “The people at large have paid in taxes to the utmost extent of their 
abilities- and yet it is an indisputable fact that the army was indifferently fed, badly 
clothed, and worse paid. Are the citizens in a better condition to contribute to the 
suonort of the war than they have been? Ask the farmer, whose stock has been sold 
bv the collector for half its value—ask the hard laborer, and industrious mechanic, 
whose wives and children have suffered for want of bread—ask these, and then de¬ 
termine whether the war .can be supported by mere taxation. 


5 oo 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


imperfect. In not one was the plan for raising money either thor¬ 
ough or equitable; from all we catch complaints of injustice and 
discrimination. At the close of the period of the Confederation a 
writer in the Providence Gazette soundly observed: 

In a number of instances ths manner of State taxation is oppressive to those 
citizens who have small property. Repeated attempts have been made, in most of the 
States, to amend their respective systems; but with little success. . . . The present 
manner of taxation is favorable to a number of opulent members in every legisla¬ 
ture, who, though they may not be a majority, can impede any essential alteration; 
and this is a serious reason for a transferal of the State debt to the United States, 
who, in the arrangement of a new system, may avoid the oppressive points of State 
taxation. 41 

One primary injustice lay in the poll tax, which fell upon the 
poor at least as heavily as the rich. It was particularly burden¬ 
some in New England, where the writer just quoted declared that 
it furnished considerably more than a fourth of the total revenue 
of Connecticut, and he believed not a smaller part of that of Massa¬ 
chusetts; “art cannot contrive a more oppressive mode of drawing 
money from a people.” As a matter of fact, just after the war the 
poll tax gave Massachusetts at least a third of her revenue. No 
families were larger than those of the poor, and fathers had to pay 
the tax of their older sons. It also discouraged manufacturing, in 
that it checked the employment of apprentices. In Virginia on the 
eve of the Revolution the tax system had been broadened because 
the legislators declared that certain other levies were easier to the 
people than the poll-tax. Another salient injustice lay in the taxa¬ 
tion of both cultivated farms and wild lands at precisely the same 
rate for every hundred acres. Still another, finally, lay in the sheer 
disregard of many potential sources of tax-income. 

Efforts at reform frequently met that selfish opposition of which 
the Providence writer speaks. In New England the mercantile 
and maritime classes controlled the Senate, and the Senate was a 
rock in the path of healthy changes. Fairness counselled abolition 
of the poll-tax and the imposition of stiff duties; but even when a 
tariff was enacted in 1782, the rates were low and smuggling was 
scandalously prevalent. In New York, on the other hand, rural in¬ 
terests held the advantage and pressed it against the traders of 
the metropolis. For decades before the war they had manifested 
a stubborn determination to place the burden of taxation on com¬ 
merce rather than on land; and in opposition to them had risen a 


41 Quoted in American Mercury, Dec. 12, 1789. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 501 

defensive combination of New York county, Westchester, and the 
three special jurisdictions or pocket boroughs, Schenectady, Rensse- 
laerwyck, and Livingston Manor. The interior of the Province was 
over-represented, and even this combination could not always resist 
it. After the Revolution, when a large part of the population of 
New York and Westchester was disfranchised because it had ac¬ 
cepted British rule, the up-State element was irresistibly powerful. 
The metropolis had no sooner been evacuated than a special tax of 
£100,000 was assessed upon it and the surrounding country, on the 
ground that the occupied region had paid no taxes during the war. 
Then came two tariff acts in close succession, burdening trade 
heavily. 

During the war New York at first relied upon a blanket levy; 
as we have seen, the tax law of 1778 carried threepence in the 
pound on lands, and half that amount on personal property. But it 
was soon found that assessments had been partially and unequally 
made, and that some county treasurers had practised shameful 
frauds. Late in 1779 New York therefore abandoned the plan of 
State-wide assessments. Instead, a fixed sum was levied on each 
county, with the promise that if the apportionment was later found 
to be unfair, the State would repay deficiencies or collect over¬ 
charges, with six per cent, interest. No longer could one county 
undervalue its lands or neglect its collections to throw an undue 
burden on its neighbors. The first apportionment ranged from 
$999,593 for Albany to $30,661 each for Orange and Westchester. 
A spirited debate raged around these quotas. First an Albany 
member moved that his county pay only $833,000 of the $2,500,000 
to be raised, but the motion was negatived by the solid vote of all 
the other counties; and on the initiative of a Dutchess member, 
Albany’s quota was fixed at the sum already named. In revenge, 
the Albany Assemblyman thereupon proposed that Dutchess be 
required to pay $800,000, but was once more overruled, and the 
figure was fixed at $703,189. Nobody pretended that the quotas 
were scientifically fixed. 

After the war this hit-or-miss method of distributing taxes con¬ 
tinued. Governor Clinton in a message to the legislature in the 
fall of 1784 deplored its failure to provide for a proper estimate 
of the value of taxable property throughout the State. Nobody 
could know how much of a burden the State could endure, he said, 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


502 

and he deplored the constant animosities aroused between counties 
regarding the quotas. 42 But there were powerful interests arrayed 
against a really equitable tax system. 

At the South the people of the lowlands tyrannized over those of 
the uplands. In North Carolina in 1785, for example, a sharp de¬ 
bate arose over taxation. Several members of the House energetically 
attacked a Senate bill taxing salt, saying that it fell too harshly 
on the poor. When the regular tax measure for the year was intro¬ 
duced, Waightstill Avery, Thomas Person, and nine others from the 
western reaches dissented. They had three main objections. First, 
many poor people, settled on thin lands “from which it requires 
the utmost industry and frugality to procure a scanty supply of 
the mere necessaries of life,” ought not to be compelled to pay a 
tax rate equal to that “imposed on the richest lands equally near to 
places of exportation.” Second, much of the value of produce was 
lost in transportation over long distances, and it was hence oppres¬ 
sive to tax lands near and lands distant from market, of equal 
fertility, at the same valuation. Third, they objected that a moder¬ 
ate tax on lands according to their real value, which Avery said 
varied from £10 an acre to £10 a hundred acres, would produce a 
much larger revenue, so that the existing plan of taxation starved 
the treasury. 43 These first protests were unavailing, and in 1786 the 
tax was still five shillings on every hundred acres without regard 
to location. In the following year, however, the reforms won a 
victory; each hundred acres west of the Cumberland mountains was 
made to pay a tax of one shilling, each hundred acres between the 

42 Robert Morris, contemplating a Federal poll tax in 1782, offered some very imper¬ 
fect reasoning in defense of the plan. The objections, he said, were drawn princi¬ 
pally from foreign lands. “In some parts of Europe, where nine-tenths of the people 
are exhausted by continual labor to procure bad clothing and worse food, this tax 
would be extremely oppressive; but in America, where three days of labor produce 
sustenance for a week, it is not unreasonable to ask two days* out of a year as a 
contribution to the payment of public debts.” Only laborers would really feel the poll 
tax, he said, and “labor is in such demand with us, that that tax will fall on the 
consumer.” Journals Cont. Cong. XXII, 441. For a good account of the rural vs. 
urban struggle to avoid tax burdens in provincial New York, see Political Science 
Quarterly, Vol. XXX, No. 3, p. 397, essay by C. W. Spencer. A queer episode of 
New York history in 1778 should be noticed. Under the impression that the war 
profiteers ought to be penalized, the two houses instructed the assessors to levy an 
additional tax, varying in amount according to their own judgment (!), upon men 
believed to have amassed large sums out of the necessities of the country. Happily, 
the Council of Revision was able to kill this oppressive bit of folly. Assembly 
Journal, 1778, 41-43; *779, 5 * ff. The legislature, unfortunately did not in this period 
realize its ambition to distribute tax burdens equitably. In 1784 the Senate told Gov. 
Clinton that it deplored “the want of fixed principles for equal taxation,” and would 
again try to ascertain and define them; Senate Journal, Oct. 21, 1784. Hamilton 
wrote in 1782: “The whole system (if it may be so called) of taxation in this State 
is radically vicious, burthensome to the people, and unproductive to the government.” 
Works, VIII, 55. 

48 N. C. State Records, XVII, 409-12; Pa. Packet, February 4, 1786. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 503 

Cumberlands and Appalachians two shillings, and each hundred 
acres east of the Appalachians three. 

Complaints of equal vehemence arose in Virginia. The Provin¬ 
cial Convention in the summer of 1776 laid a tax of one shilling 
and threepence on every tithable person, and one shilling on every 
hundred acres. The rich planter of Prince George or King William 
counties hence in many instances paid a smaller land tax than the 
poor farmer whose barren acres covered a large tract of Henrico or 
Gooch. When in the next year a comprehensive system of taxa¬ 
tion was adopted, this inequality remained. Tithes for the estab¬ 
lished church had to be paid by each poll, and this was an additional 
grievance of the poor; but as female slaves as well as male freemen 
were tithable, and such slaves were held principally by the tidewater 
aristocrats, the injustice was less than it might seem. In 1783 the 
year’s receipts were estimated by Thomson Mason as £90,000 from 
the land tax and £50,000 from the poll tax on whites, both of which 
fell on rich and poor alike; but the slave tax yielded almost as 
much—£120,000. Under the comprehensive tax system of 1777, 
broadened and improved in the revision of 1781, the taxes upon 
carriages, money, property, cattle, and income fell more heavily 
on the rich than the poor, on the lowlands than the uplands. But 
the principal reform was not wrought until the fall of 1782, when 
Virginia was divided into four great regions for land valuation. 
They corresponded roughly to the four natural divisions, the Tide¬ 
water, Piedmont, Valley, and Trans-Allegheny sections. An acreage 
taxed ten shillings in the first was to be taxed seven shillings six 
pence in the second, five shillings sixpence in the third, and three 
shillings in the extreme west. Five years later the poll tax was 
happily also abandoned as an evident evil. 44 

In South Carolina taxes were laid from the beginning on land 
and negroes, and the former, being at a uniform rate for each acre, 
were highly inequitable. Three such levies were made between 
the Declaration of Independence and the fall of Charleston four 
years later. The first, in 1777, was almost a third of a dollar for 
each negro and each hundred acres. After fighting ceased, annual 

** Washington complained in 1781 that the steward of his Virginia estate could 
not pay the taxes upon it, and that he had to sell negroes for this purpose; “the taxes 
being the most unequal (I am told) in the world—some persons paying for things of 
equal value, four times, nay ten times, the rate that others do.” Writings, IX, 182-84. 
For abandonment of the poll tax, see W. F. Dodd, Va. Hist. Mag., X. For land tax, 
see Hening, X, 140; Richmond College Hist. Papers, II, No. 1. 


504 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


taxes were laid in the same unfair fashion, so that a quarter-section 
of pine-barren, almost worthless, paid as much as a quarter-sec¬ 
tion of the best indigo or rice lands. But the upland population 
won its first real voice in legislative affairs in 1783, was clamor¬ 
ous for a reform, and soon gained its point. In 1784, crowning 
an effort intermittently maintained for thirty years, it carried a 
law for the ad valorem taxation of land, which was hailed as “a 
manifest public testimonial” that henceforth every citizen would 
“bear his part of the public burden, according to his strength, more 
or less, and no further.” 45 All lands were now rated at something 
like their real value, but none was assessed at more than $26 an 
acre, and none at less than twenty cents. 46 

Finally, the same clamor for reform arose in Georgia. There was 
at first no adequate taxation at all, and after Cornwallis’s sur¬ 
render the Council had a hard struggle to induce the House to levy 
even what it did. In 1783 the legislators taxed every negro or other 
slave, every town lot, and every hundred acres a quarter of a dollar, 
or just half what the Council had recommended; together with $1 
on every free negro and $2 on every white idler. Two years later 
the demand for more comprehensive taxes and for classification had 
borne fruit. Lands were listed as tide swamp, pine barren, inland 
swamp, salt marsh, high river swamp, oak and hickory land, sea 
islands, and so forth, and in some instances as of first, second, and 
third quality each, while the range of other taxes was wide, cov¬ 
ering real estate in town, wharves, carriages, stock in trade, and 
doctors and lawyers. But Georgia still cleaved to the inequitable 
poll tax, every white freeman this year being required to pay four 
shillings and eightpence, and every slave half as much. 47 

Apart from taxation, the States relied largely upon borrowings 
from their people, and when this failed, upon requisitions or forced 
loans. The first effort in Massachusetts to raise money for the war 
was by a loan. On May 3, 1775, the Provincial Congress authorized 
the borrowing of a hundred thousand pounds, lawful money, at six 

48 S. C. Gazette, July 17. 1784. 

46 Ramsay, “S. C.,” II, 190-91. We find the tax act of 1785 listing lands in nine 
classes, some with several subdivisions; they ranged in value from £6 to is. sterling 
an acre. On all lands there was a one per cent, ad valorem tax, as on all other prop¬ 
erty. It is clear that the classification was an enormous gain for equity. Statutes at 
Large, Cooper’s Ed., IV, 689. 

47 Marbury and Crawford, “Digest of Laws,” 452-58 et passim; Hollander, “Studies 
in State Taxation,” Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XVIII, 220-21. In July, 1783. 
the Council protested to the House against the slenderness of the tax bill, saying with 
perfect truth that it was “inadequate to the great and pressing exigencies of the 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 505 

per cent, with the promise of repayment June 1, 1777. Though 
many attempts were made to push the loan, it failed. Other States 
passed through the same experience. Maryland raised her first 
funds by assessing (December 12, 1774), a total of £10,000 on 
the counties, according to population, a measure half-way between 
a tax and a forced requisition. Congress advised the States in 
1777 to open loan offices in every district and town, with officers 
empowered to issue certificates for loans as low as $200. It was 
often difficult, in practise, to distinguish between the certificates 
and paper money, for they were passed from hand to hand like bills 
of credit. As money fell in value, the sums which it was attempted 
to borrow became nominally greater and greater: North Carolina’s 
legislature in 1779 ordered that £1,000,000 be obtained on loan. 

There were a few striking examples of widespread self-sacrifice 
in loaning or giving the States money. The Pennsylvania Legisla¬ 
ture in the spring of 1780 received from Washington a letter which 
painted in vivid colors the desperate condition of the republic—the 
army’s distress, the danger of mutiny, the lack of money. A des¬ 
pairing silence was broken by one member who had been a hopeful 
patriot: if Washington’s letter was accurate, he said, “it appears 
to me in vain to contend the matter any longer. We may as well 
give up first as last.” But the clerk, Thomas Paine, and others, 
believed that private credit could come to the rescue. Paine sent 
a friend $500, and begged him to open a subscription list among his 
friends; Robert Morris stepped forward with a large gift; and soon 
no less than £300,000 in Pennsylvania currency was raised. When 
the Maryland Legislature in the same gloomy spring called on the 
citizens to take up a loan by advancing specie, paper, or tobacco, 
members of the Legislature at once made up a subscription list, 
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer giving $2,000 in paper and five 
hogsheads of tobacco, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton ten hogs¬ 
heads of tobacco. Subscriptions were set on foot in all sections, 
and large sums obtained. 48 But such manifestations of patriotism 
were rare. The returns from State loan offices finally dwindled 
to a mere trickle. High interest rates did not prove a bait, and 
when South Carolina, on ceasing to issue paper money, offered three 
per cent, more than the interest paid by individuals, the result was 
discouraging. 

48 Scharf, “Md.,” II, 375 5 Laws of 1780, June session, Ch. 2. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


506 

In Rhode Island during 1779, the subscriptions to a loan for 
Continental purposes having been few, the Assembly ordered the 
assessors to apportion $100,000 of the loan among those able to 
pay, and gave them power to enforce payment—a virtual conscrip¬ 
tion of wealth. The usual State course was simply to empower the 
proper officers to seize supplies and to pay in certificates. Virginia 
in 1779 and the succeeding years obtained army supplies by merely 
taking them and giving receipts, which were made receivable for 
taxes. In 1780 there were many seizures, in addition to heavy 
taxes in kind, the latter including such items as 3,000 suits of 
clothes and 74 wagons and teams. In 1781, with the tide of war 
rolling up from the South, the Virginia Treasurer was empowered to 
borrow not only money but tobacco, hemp, and flour, at six per 
cent, interest. In North Carolina two years earlier each county had 
been required to supply a certain number of hats, shoes, stockings, 
and yards of cloth. North Carolina’s impressments in the final 
struggle with Cornwallis and Tarleton became so harsh, indeed, that 
Davie called them “legal robbery qualified by a promissory note.” 
Two months after Cornwallis had been bagged he wrote that the 
promissory notes “are called ‘State tricks,’ and will be no longer re¬ 
ceived; so that I have been obliged to procure the necessary sup¬ 
plies by impressment and contribution.” 

Several States also tried to borrow money abroad, and met with 
even less success. Difficult as it was for the nation to obtain funds 
in Holland, France, and Spain, it was much more difficult for an 
individual State to do so. Maryland sent a commissioner abroad, 
one Matthew Ridley, who in 1781-82 negotiated in Holland a loan 
for 300,000 guilders; but the Legislature thought the terms dis¬ 
advantageous, and ordered Ridley to repay the money already in 
his hands. Later another loan, to be repaid by annual tobacco 
shipments, was floated with the Dutch. 49 The Virginia Legislature 
in the fall of 1778 authorized the Governor to negotiate a foreign 
loan for £1,000,000 in money and military stores. Governor Henry 
tried to effect the loan through Dr. William Lee, the State’s agent 
in Europe, and a special agent, one Captain Lemaire. Lee’s ill- 
temper defeated his own efforts, but Lemaire in the spring of 1779 
obtained a shipment of artillery and munitions by the French Gov- 

49 Me Sherry, “Md.,” 310. Samuel Chase soon after the peace recovered Maryland’s 
investment of Colonial days in the stock of the Bank of England, amounting to 
$650,000. 


THE ST A TES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 5°7 


emment amounting to £256,633. In Lee’s stead Mazzei and others 
were later employed with success, and procured loans of a consid¬ 
erable amount. 50 South Carolina in 1784 was offered a foreign loan 
to help lift her from the bog in which she had been left by British 
devastation, and accepted it, her debt five years later being still 
nearly £100,ooo. 51 Pennsylvania was not so fortunate. In the 
spring of 1780 the Legislature authorized the borrowing of £200,000 
abroad, to be repaid on the State’s faith after ten years. James 
Searles, who had been in the Continental Congress, went to France 
and Holland, but found it impracticable to carry any negotiation 
through. Governor Trumbull’s son also vainly tried in 1781 to 
obtain a Dutch loan of £200,000. 

The most interesting source of State income was of course the 
general confiscation of Tory estates. One of the first proposals of 
this stroke was made by Paine in his enormously popular “Common 
Sense,” brought out a half-year before independence; and the idea 
of waging the war with the American property of their opponents 
naturally appealed to many patriots. It satisfied a lust for ven¬ 
geance that had expressed itself in rioting, and it was profitable. 
Vandalism against Tory property was stopped, and some States 
began their confiscations even before Congress, on November 27, 
1777 ? recommended that they all seize the possessions of men who 
had forfeited “the right to protection,” and invest the proceeds in 
Continental loan certificates. South Carolina alone failed to pass a 
confiscation act before the surrender of Cornwallis. 

It has been plausibly estimated that hardly less than a third of 
the citizens of the Colonies were either actively Tory in their sym¬ 
pathies, or so neutral that they had no sympathy for the patriot 
cause; and in every Province the Tories included some of the richest 
—as also some of the most intelligent and respected men. They 
were now, with exceptions all too rare, stripped of what they owned 
in patriot-controlled territory. In some States they were given 
the privilege of appealing for jury trial; in some a peremptory pro¬ 
cess of attainder allowed of no appeal whatever. 52 In certain States 


" The ^'renc^Cki'vern'me'nt ^grew urgent in pressing for the repayment of this debt; 
Pf . Mass Centinel Tanuary 24, 1789; American Museum, V, 4 Ib - , , , 

« Double or treble taxation for non-jurors, including many neutra ^, a ^ ^“patriot 
y religious conviction were averse to taking oaths, was common. Where the pa 1t 
rmies were in control, the soldiery sometimes plundered the estates of the hostile 
r neutral mercilessly; and when Washington forbade his troops to molest any Tory, 
was said by one Tory that his words were like Venetian succor-too late. Van 
'yne, “Loyalists,” 276-77 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


508 

the sheriffs and other regular officers of the law saw to the eviction 
of the old property holders and the installation of the new; in 
others, special commissioners were selected to supervise the seizure 
and sale, or trustees were chosen by the probate authorities to take 
charge of loyalist property. Almost everywhere the method of dis¬ 
posing of the seized property was laid down by law; but in several 
States irregularities occurred, and the downright corruption attend¬ 
ing the confiscations became a public scandal. Even when the let¬ 
ter of the law was obeyed, rascals could line their pockets. Gov¬ 
ernor Livingston, of New Jersey, for example, complained that some 
commissioners of confiscated estates bought land immediately with 
the proceeds of their sales, and then, much later, paid the proceeds 
to the State in money that had meanwhile depreciated. 

The richest fruits of the policy of confiscation were not reaped until 
the Revolution was in its last stages, and in a number of States 
till active fighting had ceased. Not until 1780 was confiscation 
really lucrative in Pennsylvania. It reached a broad scale in Mary¬ 
land the same year, and in the next an issue of £200,000 of paper 
was based upon it. North Carolina passed her first confiscation 
act in 1777, but not until 1779 did she carry it into real effect, and 
then only in the face of a fierce opposition roused by its unduly 
severe terms. The British occupation in New York and South 
Carolina made it necessary for those States to withhold their most 
ambitious confiscatory measures until after the evacuations. Rhode 
Island’s act of confiscation was passed in the fall of 1779, and 
could not be fully enforced till 1780. Virginia enacted a law of 
forfeiture in the spring of 1779, not long before the British inva¬ 
sions, while Maryland delayed until the fall of 1780, and even then 
incorporated generous exceptions in her statutes. 53 

It is indubitable that the States profited greatly by their seizures. 
Several found little upon which to lay their hands because Tories 
were few, as in Connecticut and New Hampshire. The latter State 
seized the pretentious manorial holdings of Governor John Went¬ 
worth, but they did not even cover the debts outstanding against 
them until his father, Mark Wentworth, generously waived his own 
large claims till the other creditors were satisfied. South Carolina 
realized little because her initially stem measures were followed by 

03 For Livingston’s complaints, see Sedgwick’s “Livingston,” 392-93; for Virginia’s 
interesting acts on British property, Hening, IX, 377; X, 66; XI, 81; for Maryland’s 
act. Laws, Maxcy’s Ed., I, 403, 413. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 509 

measures of exemption and even restitution. But New York alone 
obtained more than $3,600,000 in specie from the sale of the loyal¬ 
ists’ property. The commissioners who sold confiscated property 
in Maryland realized a total of £454,181, and the Intendant, or State 
Treasurer, an additional sum. In Georgia one estate alone, that of 
Sir James Wright, was worth £34,000, or $i6o,ooo. 54 When the Brit¬ 
ish Government opened an avenue for the submission to it of loyal¬ 
ist claims for compensation, more than 5,000 loyalists came forward, 
while this was a number much short of those who had suffered 
direct losses. For demands based upon any of the three allowable 
grounds, loss of property, of office, or of definite professional in¬ 
come, the British commissioners made awards totalling £3,292,492, 
and this was less than half of what the Tories had asked. 55 There 
were various actual losses by confiscation, as of land bought or 
improvements made during the war, or of uncultivated ground, or of 
property of defective title, for which the claimants were given no 
compensation, no matter how convincing their evidence. 

Among the other sources of income, the two chief were the sale 
of lands and the laying of import duties and tonnage dues. Penn¬ 
sylvania, during the spring before Yorktown, opened a land office 
which at once became one of her important means of revenue, 
and contributed much toward her prompt self-extrication from debt. 
The holders of State certificates in many instances laid them out 
in the land office. The Massachusetts Legislature in 1788 sold 
the State’s western lands for £300,000 in State notes and £10,000 in 
specie. 56 Two years earlier, in a statement issued to set at rest the 
discontent which had led to Shays’s rebellion, the General Court 
had shown that no less than £34,650 in notes for pay to soldiers had 
been redeemed by the sale of lands; and that additional notes for 
which tracts in Maine had been sold, but which had not yet been 
paid into the Treasury, amounted to £30,693. When at the begin¬ 
ning of 1784 Governor Clinton urged the establishment of a fund 
for discharging New York’s debt, he enumerated among the means 
not only direct taxation, but the sale of public lands, the laying of 

84 For the sum realized in Maryland, where Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer accused 
the commissioners of outrageous grafting, see Md. Journal, January 19. 1787. For 
Wright’s estate, see Stevens’s “Georgia,” II, 344 ff- New Hampshire took twenty-eight 
estates; Prov., State, and Town Papers, VIII, 803. By 1786, post-war sales amounting 
to £221,374 were reported in North Carolina, and a new confiscation law was passed 
as late as 1787. See Boyd’s “North Carolina,” 9. 

“Sabine. I, 112. 

M This “will put their public debt on a respectable footing,” said the N. Y. 
Journal, April 10, 1788. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


5 io 

internal duties and excises, marine passes, and a tax on auctions; 
and that spring the legislature passed an act for the settlement of 
waste and unappropriated lands. Virginia in the spring of 1779 
established a land office and offered unlimited areas at £40 for 100 
acres. 57 All the Southern States discharged much of their obliga¬ 
tion to the soldiers with land, and all of them also sold land for 
cash or certificates. 

The income of the States from tariffs or tonnage dues was greater 
than would be supposed. It was generally largest in Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, and New York, but it formed an important part of State 
revenues elsewhere. The total dutiable imports of the nation during 
this period averaged, we may safely estimate, more than fifteen 
million dollars a year. A committee of Congress in 1783 computed 
that the goods shipped from Europe, exclusive of tea, brandy, and 
wine, were worth £3,500,000 sterling, or $15,555,554- In 179° 
the imports paying ad valorem duties to the Federal treasury came 
to $i5,388,409. 58 It was evident that a moderate tariff would yield 
three quarters of a million annually, and that the chief commercial 
States would find the impost a means of reducing their direct taxes. 
Manufacturing tradesmen who wanted protection and rural tax¬ 
payers who wanted relief, gladly joined hands to pass the tariff 
laws. 

Not until after the treaty of peace were tariffs for protection and 
a high revenue introduced, though low tariffs had been well known 
before. Pennsylvania in 1780 had passed an act which levied spe¬ 
cial duties on certain tropical products and liquor, and one per cent. 
ad valorem on other goods. Virginia in 1782 also levied duties on 
liquor, sugar, and coffee, and a tariff of one per cent, on all other 
imposts. These were typical of the modest beginnings. We find 
South Carolina in 1782 imposing a somewhat higher rate—some 
special levies, and two and a half per cent, ad valorem on all else. 
Then came tariffs which really counted, political hostility for Great 
Britain reinforcing the other motives for their enactment. New 
York’s first tariff act the spring of 1785 was followed by a much 
more severe one that fall. Every coach or chariot paid £20, every 
gold watch £1 6d., every gallon of madeira or malt liquor, sixpence; 
while a long list of imports was taxed five per cent, and another 

87 See Ambler, “Sectionalism in Virginia,” 44 ff., for an account of the unfortunate 
results of Virginia’s liberality in granting her lands, large tracts going to speculators 
for a mere song. 

88 Journals of Congress, Ed. 1823, IV, 201; Bemis, “Jay’s Treaty,” 33. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 511 

list two and a half per cent. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island 
enacted high tariffs in 1785. Virginia in September did the same, 
emphasizing a protective purpose. Massachusetts, influenced by 
her powerful commercial community, was reluctant. But her 
tariff act the summer of this year greatly increased the list of 
dutiable goods, while in the autumn of 1786, under the dangerous 
pressure of the rebellious west, the legislature laid duties of from 
one to fifteen per cent, on a long roster of commodities, and hit 
luxuries—against which there was now a nation-wide clamor— 
especially hard. 59 

Just how large were the sums thus raised by the States? In 
1785 the Pennsylvania committee of ways and means estimated 
that the revenue would be, one year with another, £82,232 annually. 
Virginia, trying hard to pay off her enormous debt, found that in a 
little less than a year, 1786-87, her customs receipts, including the 
export duties on tobacco, were almost £87,000. In 1788 the New 
York collector of customs paid into the treasury no less than £70,- 
298 as the proceeds of the tariff. The statement of the Massachu¬ 
setts legislature after Shays’s rebellion declared that the whole sum 
received during the years 1781-85 inclusive from the tariff and 
excise was £154,378, or more than one-tenth the whole amount 
of taxes levied in that period. This was little enough, but as we 
have seen, the tariff had just been increased. In South Carolina 
the tariff was sufficient to pay the whole civil list of the State. North 
Carolina, in spite of her small commerce, collected in 1787 from the 
impost by water and the British tonnage dues no less than £17,165. 60 
It is interesting to note how Elbridge Gerry ranked the commerce 
of the several States when in 1789 he reported to the national House 
an estimate of the probable net proceeds from the Federal tariff 
and tonnage dues, drawn from the latest data available. It was a 
rough computation, for the revenue laws were diverse and the modes 
of keeping the accounts varied greatly. The estimated tariff col¬ 
lections in Pennsylvania were $376,841; in New York, $245,165; 
in Maryland, $223,620; and in Massachusetts, $216,366. Virginia 
fell into fifth place, with estimated collections of $176,185, and 

60 Laws of Pa., 1810 ed., I, chapters 914, 9&7, ”77; Hening’s '‘Statutes,” X, 165, 
cox- Laws of Maryland, 1780, June session, Ch. 7; Acts and Laws of Mass., 1781, 
p. 94; 1782, p. 166; 1785, p. 300; 1786, p. 526; Laws of New York, 1777-1801, I, 

58 ® 0> Amer Museum, V, 252; Grigsby, “Va. Fed. Conv.,” II, 172 ff.; Rowland’s Mason, 
II, 60-62; N. Y. Packet, Jan. 23, 1789; report by North Carolina legislative sub¬ 
committee', published in S. Ca. State Gazette, Feb. 17, 1789. 


512 THE AMERICAN STATES 

South Carolina into sixth, with $137,887. No other State was 
expected to return more than $8o,ooo. 61 

A salient feature of State finance during and after the Revolution 
was the way in which large arrears of taxes were allowed to accumu¬ 
late, and a few instances will show eloquently how the treasuries 
suffered from this fact. The arrears in Massachusetts in the years 
1781-86 inclusive amounted to no less than £279,437, or nearly 
one-fourth the whole taxes levied in that time. The total of unpaid 
back-taxes in New Hampshire was estimated at £120,000 in 1785. 
Pennsylvania in the five years preceding March 21, 1783, had passed 
acts for raising the enormous sum of £20,996,995 in Continental 
bills, £367,381 in State money, and £745,297 in specie. The failure 
to pay in some sections was so marked that the Legislature resolved 
that the counties “have hitherto contributed towards the public 
expenses in very unequal proportions,” contrary to the bill of 
rights, and that a remedy must be found. In the years 1782-83, the 
State laid taxes for £645,000, but the amount actually paid was 
£202,367—less than a third. 

In New York in the midsummer of 1782 special legislation went 
into effect to compel the payment of back-taxes. As for Maryland, 
the total tax arrears for 1784-85 were £97,000, and the House esti¬ 
mated in the spring of 1787 that those for 1786 would be about 
£100,000. In Virginia the difficulties of collection early became 
insuperable. We have mentioned the armed resistance to tax collec¬ 
tors during the war. In 1781 half a dozen counties paid nothing at 
all, and many others furnished no revenue except the license taxes, 
which amounted to a mere pittance. Only about half the counties 
paid anything under the general assessments. All this indicates a 
hopeless disorganization of Virginia’s revenue system. Indeed, the 
State government, headed by the stem soldier Thomas Nelson, Jr., 
encouraged the troops to collect supplies from the countryside as 
they were needed. This “seizing scheme” caused great restiveness, 
but it was unavoidable. After 1781 the tax system should have 
been reinvigorated. Yet we find that one of the standing grievances 
of men like Madison was the tendency of the House to postpone the 
date on which taxes fell due, on such excuses as that the people must 
be given the benefit of an approaching market. Legislation to make 
distraint for unpaid taxes was also delayed or defeated. Arrears 


61 American State Papers, Finance, I, 14. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 513 

reached such a volume that in 1787 the treasurer received more than 
£33,000 ($110,000) on their account, or nearly one-fourth the 
year’s receipts in current taxes. In North Carolina the Treasurer 
collected for the year ending November 1, 1788, the sum of £35,862 
on account of taxes for that year, and as arrearages for previous 
years no less than £54,131, or half again as much. 62 

No complaints of government at that period were commoner than 
expressions of dissatisfaction with the mechanism for collecting 
State moneys, and none were better based. Why doesn’t the Legis¬ 
lature demand the immediate payment of outstanding taxes? asked 
a writer in the New Hampshire Mercury in 1785. 63 Here the State 
is paying interest for borrowed moneys, taxes are rising, and those 
who do pay them are shouldering a double burden. It would be 
only right if those who have heretofore made punctual payment 
would refuse to contribute any more until the arrears were collected. 
I have seen several Legislatures, wrote Governor Livingston of New 
Jersey, economize by paring the salaries of officials to the bone. But 
I have not yet seen one calling to serious account the sheriffs who 
have defrauded the State of hundreds of pounds apiece, or the com¬ 
missioners who have plundered us of thousands. 64 Governor Burke 
of North Carolina in 1781 complained that the numberless men 
employed in collecting revenue exhausted much of it, while by neg¬ 
lecting to settle with the county courts, they prevented the clearing 
up of the accounts and the due collection of outstanding taxes. 65 
Two years later Samuel Johnston made the same complaint, saying 
that the scattering of the State’s money through many hands was 


63 Arrears in New York reached such a sum that at the fall session in 1781, Governor 
Clinton recommended stern measures to collect them, and the following June again 
referred to them in his address to the Legislature. For the arrears in Massachusetts, 
see “Address of the General Court to the People,” 1786; for those in Maryland, see 
“The present State of Maryland, by Delegates of the People,” 1787. The Maryland 
Gazette of April 1, 1785, put the arrears of the previous year at £132,818. Thomas 
Johnson wrote Washington in 1787 that the State was “so embarrassed with a diversity 
of paper money and paper securities, a sparing imposition and an infamous collection 
and payment (or rather non-payment) of taxes,” that he could not say when there 
would be money in hand to meet a debt of £300! Sparks, “Letters to Washington,” 
IV, 195. For arrears in Virginia, see Calendar of State Papers, 1781, 128, 134, 239, 
et passim; Richmond College Hist. Papers, II, No. 1. 

M June 21, 178s 

84 Sedgwick’s “Livingston,” 392-93. For “An Act to compel the officers of the 
State to pay forward the same species of monies and obligations by them received 
in trust for the State” (it being common for them to pay forward in money that had 
greatly depreciated) see Acts of N. J. Gen. Ass. of 1783-84, p. 114. 

In 1782 it was necessary to send special agents to almost every county com¬ 
missioner, as Governor Burke said, “either to interest him in his duty,” or “to urge 
him to a more precise execution”; this was “expensive and laborious,” but absolutely 
necessary. Burke declared that the collectors were bound by no law then in force 
either to make returns of their collections, or to account for their expenditures, save 
perhaps to a Legislature too busy to inquire into such matters. N. C. State Records, 
XV, 497-98; XVI, 5-19. 


5i4 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


annually costing thousands. Legislation to give more vigor to the 
collection of taxes became familiar in all parts of the United States. 
In North Carolina, for example, an act was passed at the October 
session in 1779 to compel sheriffs* and collectors to account for taxes, 
one at the spring session in 1780 for more effectual tax-gathering, 
and later laws for the same purposes in 1781, 1784, 1785, and 1787— 
a half dozen in all! 66 

One State after another resorted to the appointment of a special 
officer to assist the Treasurer and to scrutinize the general fiscal ad¬ 
ministration, laying statements of the public finances before the 
Legislature. He was usually called the Comptroller. The lead in 
this reform was taken by Pennsylvania, in which the financial con¬ 
fusion at the close of the Revolution was extreme. In March, 1781, 
a committee composed of Reed, Bayard, and Rittenhouse reported 
to the legislature on the reasons for the steady accumulation of un¬ 
collected taxes. One cause was the dearth of competent tax-gath¬ 
erers, for suitable men would not undertake the disagreeable duty 
for the low compensation offered; another was the authorization of 
payments in kind; and a third was the fact that farmers frequently 
regarded the Continental or State certificates as receipts for the 
payment of their face value in taxes. The unwise removal of 
excise officers, just beginning to understand their duties, at every 
fresh overturn in politics, kept the excise department in constant 
chaos. Finally, prosecutions for the non-payment of taxes were 
seldom attempted. The movement for reform in Pennsylvania led 
to the establishment of the position of Comptroller-General, filled 
first by John Nicholson. He was to collect arrears, settle accounts, 
and prepare an annual abstract of financial operations for the As¬ 
sembly; and at once he began saving his modest salary many times 
over. “All accounts and demands are liquidated with a diligence and 
an ability that is of the most important advantage to the State,” 
commented the Freeman’s Journal ? 1 “A chaos of old papers have 
been waded through with immence patience, and many errors of 
former auditors and committees of Assembly discovered.” 68 

08 See Reed’s “Reed,” for many letters describing the waste of Pennsylvania money 
during the war; and Bolles’s “Pennsylvania,” II, 65 ff. In North Carolina gross 
frauds in the forging of war claims were connived at by public officers; see Boyd’s 
“North Carolina,” p. 3. 

67 December 31, 1783. Nicholson had authority to fix the specie sums due to 
soldiers, and to issue interest-bearing certificates for them. A mechanism for adjudi¬ 
cating appeals from this authority was constructed in 1785. See Laws of Pa., 1810 Ed., 
II, Chs. 959, 1147. 

68 Similar offices were created in North Carolina and New Hampshire. “The dis¬ 
order of the public accounts calls loudly foP a remedy to distinguish what should be 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 515 


It is interesting to note that the admirable work of Robert Morris 
for the nation led to suggestions that the all-powerful Legislatures 
appoint similar officers for the States. The finances of Massachusetts 
and New York were as well-ordered as those of any State save 
Connecticut and Delaware. But “Consideration” nevertheless pro¬ 
tested in the Massachusetts Centinel in 1786 against “the loose mode 
of doing this business by committees” of the Legislature, a mode 
which meant that no one was responsible for the success or failure 
of financial policies. “Witness,” he argued, “the loss of Tory es¬ 
tates—the old money—the public securities refused, which were 
offered by the officers of the late army, for Eastern lands: and those 
lands now in danger of being totally lost to the public.” Why not 
appoint the Treasurer to superintend all financial affairs as a Finan¬ 
cier? 69 Later in the year another correspondent suggested that Gen. 
Lincoln be made Commissioner of Finance, and empowered to draft 
a comprehensive financial program. During November the office of 
Comptroller-General was duly established. In New York a year 
later a writer in the Advertiser called for a superintendent of finance 
who would bring all disbursing officers to strict account, see that taxes 
were collected, and lay exact fiscal statements before the Legisla¬ 
ture. In 1789 a House committee in South Carolina reported that 
it was essential that there be one or a few persons empowered to 
“control and superintend the finances of the State,” but the Senate 
disagreed. 70 

IV. Paper Money Movement of 1785-86 


It remains to record the most interesting episode of State finan¬ 
cial history under the Confederation—the great paper money agita¬ 
tion of 1785-86; and the antecedent circumstances must be kept 
clearly in mind. In these two years the country felt itself full in the 
trough of the economic depression that had swept over it like a 
wave in since 1781. Actually, it was already in the slope of the 


charges against the United States,” Governor Burke told the Legislature in April, 
1782- N. C. State Records, XVI, 5-19- In South Carolina the Legislature made 
many efforts to take direct supervision of the fiscal department through committees. 
“Nevertheless,” wrote Ramsay (II, 192), “many frauds were committed without 
detection, and much was lost from neglect and mismanagement. No man in or 
out of office could tell with any precision the amount of the debts and credits of 
the State.” For the Connecticut controllership, see New Haven Gazette, June 22, 
1786; for the New Hampshire office, N. H. State Papers, XXI, 407. Virginia in 1780 
appointed a solicitor-general to help collect arrears and bills; Hening, X, 350. 

89 February 28, 1786. ^ „ _ _ , . ,, 

70 n. Y. Advertiser, March 17, 1787; S. C. State Gazette, February 17, 1789; Mass. 
Centinel, September 30, 1786; Mass. Acts and Laws, 1786, p. jn. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


5 i6 

succeeding wave of prosperity, but it could not know that. The 
skies seemed darker and darker. In 1783 the States, the towns, the 
counties, were heavily oppressed by debt; the public had suffered 
from the total loss of perhaps two hundred million dollars in repudi¬ 
ated paper, and from increasing taxation; and large areas had been 
laid waste. From an exhausting war recovery was naturally slow 
and hard, and it was made harder by European trade restrictions. 
The British regulations regarding the West Indies alone cost Ameri¬ 
can merchants a trade worth $3,500,000 annually. Because there 
was no national coinage of specie, and a steady purchase of goods 
from overseas was maintained, the business and agricultural de¬ 
pression was accompanied by a stringency of hard money. 

All over the nation after Cornwallis’s surrender shrewd statesmen 
called for a pay-as-you-go policy and for taxation to reduce debts. 
The State debt of Massachusetts was about $7,100,000, and there 
not a few urged repudiation, though this would mean a sore loss 
to many patriotic creditors, and even destitution to many returned 
soldiers. Governor Hancock in 1783 took a wiser view. He urged 
the Legislature, in view of the dire need of many veterans who were 
being forced to sell their wage certificates at one-eighth their face 
value, and of other considerations, to take vigorous measures to 
raise money. An additional tax of $470,000 was voted for the 
soldiers, and in 1784 the tax screws were still further tightened. 
Roger Sherman was a prominent advocate in Connecticut of heavy 
taxation. Governor Clinton opened the year 1784 in New York 
by urging “productive funds for the discharge of the interest and 
sinking, as soon as may be practicable, the principal of the pub¬ 
lic debts.” Madison in Virginia preached the same doctrine. Gov¬ 
ernor Guerard of South Carolina in 1783 called for retrenchment, 
a bank, and a sinking fund, “that so, we may accomplish the full 
and honorable discharge of all our debts.” 71 

These exhortations fell at the moment that most men were hoping 
for relaxation and ease; and complaints that it was impossible to 
pay more taxes became nation-wide. They were sometimes justi¬ 
fied, but more often baseless. Governor Rutledge admitted in South 
Carolina at the commencement of 1782 that “in the present scarcity 

71 S. C. Gazette, February 19, 1784. Governor Rutledge had preceded Guerard by 
saying, at the beginning of 1782, that “all unsettled demands should be liquidated, and 
satisfactory assurances of payment given the public creditors.” R. W. Gibbes, ‘‘Doc. 
Hist. Am. Rev., 1781-82,” 237. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 517 

of specie it would be difficult, if not impossible, to levy a tax to any 
considerable amount, towards sinking the public debt. . . and 
R. H. Lee in similar vein wrote Madison, near the close of 1784, 
expostulating against the latter’s views. Daily accounts were being 
received, he said, of the powerful migrations from Virginia to the 
southward and southwestward, caused by land hunger and the 
hatred of heavy taxes. Virginia’s tax rate Lee thought to be prob¬ 
ably the heaviest in the world, and he proposed cutting it down, 
and doing no more than pay the interest and a very small part of the 
principal of the State debt yearly. 72 

In New York just after Cornwallis’s surrender the Legislature 
protested that it believed it impossible, in the exhausted condition 
of the State, to comply with any of the Congressional requisitions. 
A New England correspondent of a London journal sent it in 1784 
an account of the aversion of the Massachusetts legislators to taxes. 
“They are not chosen for any particular abilities, but are sent with 
express direction to oppose all taxes. The cry is, don’t tell us of 
the necessity of the times, but let us have no taxes.” He pictured 
their dull, lifeless sessions. “If in the midst of a drowsy harangue, 
the word taxes should be mentioned, the sound electrifies them in 
an instant, like sleeping geese; when alarmed, every head is elevated, 
every eye is opened; all is bustle and attention; and no sooner has 
the speaker sat down, but twenty of these no-tax men will rise to¬ 
gether, to let fly a volley of objections.” 73 

Answers to all these complaints were easily made. When Con¬ 
necticut excused herself from paying a Continental requisition, Mor¬ 
ris wrote Governor Trumbull (July 31, 1782) that the people were 
talking nonsense. In all countries it was constantly being com¬ 
plained that times were hard, money was scarce, taxes were heavy, 
and the like. But the very universality of the complaint, he declared, 
showed that it was usually unfounded. The simple fact was that 
the ordinary man would always find use for all the money he could 
get hold of, and more, and that the taxgatherer would therefore 
always be an unwelcome visitant. 74 He wrote more testily to Vir¬ 
ginia. The inhabitants there, he said, wouldn’t pay money in taxes 
because they wanted it “to purchase foreign superfluities and ad¬ 
minister to luxurious indolence.” A New Jersey writer in the spring 

72 Letters, II, 300. 

78 Republished S. C. Gazette, December 16, 1784. 

74 Oberholtzer, “Morris,” 147. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


5 i 8 

of 1782 argued that there was not another three million people on 
the face of the earth so prosperous as Americans. The income of an 
industrious common laborer, he declared, was equal to that of a 
tradesman in England. 75 In Virginia there appeared an ironical 
essay on “Proofs of the Scarcity of Money.” This scarcity so ham¬ 
pered racing, the essayist said, that at ten turfs within the State 
a total of only £2,610 was paid yearly to winning horses. Great 
crowds of poverty stricken people in fine clothes, betting money, 
thronged the turfs. There were now only five times as many four- 
wheeled carriages as there had been two decades before; while many 
families had given up a chair worth £15 or £20 for a chariot worth 
many times as much. When the “American Comedians” had ap¬ 
peared in Richmond and Petersburg in the last two years, the audi¬ 
ence of penniless men eager to forget their money troubles crowded 
the theatre to suffocation. In cock-fighting the spring had passed, 
and only £355 had been paid to owners of winning cocks. But all 
such answers, sarcastic or denunciatory, were in vain. 76 

Two States escaped the paper money agitation almost wholly, 
Connecticut and Delaware; in three more the paper money party 
could not gain control of the Legislatures; and in several others no 
extensive harm was wrought. We must remember that the paper 
money doctrine was endemic, and that what happened in 1785 was 
that it simply became epidemic and virulent. North Carolina in 
1783 made an emission for the relief of the soldiery, which Samuel 
Johnston’s conservative party hailed with alarm. 77 In the same 
year in Virginia the demand led Fairfax County to instruct its 
representatives to oppose all future emissions. In Maryland in 1784 
a definite proposal was formulated—that £100,000 in paper be 
loaned at six per cent. During 1785-86 the wave of economic dis¬ 
couragement reached its crest in all the States; depression and pes¬ 
simism were converted in many communities into desperation; and 
like an irresistible swell the demand arose everywhere for help— 
for stay laws, for paper money, and for a postponement of taxes. It 
was strong in many towns, and overwhelming in many country dis¬ 
tricts. 

“Pennsylvania and North Carolina,” Madison wrote Jefferson in 

75 N. J. Gazette, April 17, 1782. More wealth was lost by indolent agriculture in 
the years 1776-78, he said, than all the Federal levies amounted to. 

76 N. Haven Gazette, October 5, 1786. 

T 77 , F !? r jr S P rote st against paper money and the law suspending suits, see McRee’s 
Iredell, II, 63-64. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 519 

1786, “took the lead in this folly.” It was no accident that the 
two States which were worst governed during the Revolution did so, 
and that they suffered far more than any others from their emis¬ 
sions. 

The second distinctive paper money episode in Pennsylvania his¬ 
tory is one of great interest. When the war ended the State had 
made an earnest, intelligent effort to abolish its financial difficulties. 
In order to take care of its share of the “forty-to-one” bills of 
1780, the Legislature passed an act for levying $93,640 in taxes an¬ 
nually for six years. In June, 1784, the first tax-levy in specie was 
made, for a sum no less than £200,000—before the war the govern¬ 
ment’s yearly income had not exceeded £40,000. Payments were 
still short of the expected mark, for well-to-do men, including many 
Quakers, concealed part of their property after the war as well as 
during it, and when it could not be concealed, delayed paying their 
assessments. But steadily the burden was brought closer home to 
those who ought to bear it. By the end of 1784 the accounts had 
been fairly set in order, and the whole indebtedness ascertained. It 
was known that the interest upon the debt to the general govern¬ 
ment amounted to about £125,000; that the Penns would have to 
be recompensed for their lands; and that provision must be made for 
the debt owed to citizens of the State. Had Pennsylvania possessed 
a double-chambered Legislature, it might have kept on in the path 
it had wisely taken in liquidating its liabilities. 

But at this juncture, in December, 1784, the single house pro¬ 
posed that the State should assume all debts of the United States 
to citizens of Pennsylvania, in cancellation of an equal amount of 
the State’s debt to the general government; and that it should es¬ 
tablish a perpetual fund for paying six per cent on these debts. 
Such a fund would be costly, and the Legislature had to admit that 
even the existing taxes were so heavy that the arrearages had been 
enormous. It therefore resolved that “to enable the good people of 
this State to pay the arrearages of taxes with greater ease and 
facility, bills of credit to the amount of . . . £183,232 be prepared.” 
President Dickinson, in a message of February 1, 1785, protested 
against this with his usual conservative wisdom. The assumption, he 
said, would be needless, costly, and a blow to the nation’s credit, 
for it would make it appear that the State distrusted the ability of 
the national government to pay the Pennsylvania creditors. And 


520 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


he especially objected to the paper emission. Already, he pointed 
out, the State had more than £160,000 in circulation, which had 
depreciated so that it required $2.50 in it to buy one dollar in specie, 
and which, though it might be used at face value in buying State 
lands, was still falling. 78 

The President had earnest supporters. The legislators in the 
spring of 1785 found before them a petition from the “middle coun¬ 
ties’’ declaring that the funding and paper money plan meant the 
ruin of the State. The Continental certificates of debt owed to 
Pennsylvanians would, under the plan, be good for the purchase of 
Pennsylvania lands. The result, the petitioners alleged, would be 
that a few of the speculators in these certificates would obtain great 
areas, set up manors, and hold the tenant population in vassalage. 
The poor would not be benefited by the plan, for very few of them 
“have certificates in their possession; these are chiefly in the hands 
of those who have taken advantage of the vices, the ignorance, or 
the necessities of the men who fought and bled for our defence, so 
as legally to rob them of seven parts in eight of their dearly earned 
wages.” The certificate holders who did not want to buy land would 
be paid interest on their holdings. “A tribe of speculators have 
haunted the poor soldiers at every place where they were called to 
settle their accounts, and have, by every artifice in their power, 
seduced them to part with their certificates at one-eighth or one- 
tenth their value; then, in order to relieve these poor sufferers, their 
widows and children, etc., very few of whom have no certificate in 
possession, and in order to preserve the public faith, justice, and 
credit, it becomes necessary to make every certificate bear inter¬ 
est!” 79 At least, the petitioners asked, discriminate between the 
original holders of certificates, and those who bought them at a 
fraction of their face value. From the mercantile interests of Phila¬ 
delphia came a protest against the paper money feature, presented 
after a public meeting at the City Tavern that was fifty to one 
against the emission. 80 

But two groups zealously pushed the plan: the public creditors, 
and the many paper-money enthusiasts. The former had long peti¬ 
tioned the Legislature to relieve their sufferings in consequence of 
the failure of Congress either to pay its debts to them, or to allow 

78 Pa. Archives, Series IV, Vol. 3, 991 ff. 

79 Pa. Packet, March 12, 1785. 

80 Pa. Packet, Feb. 24, 1785. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 521 

them interest. It was an act of essential justice, demanded by 
State honor, they argued. In newspaper essays and vehement pub¬ 
lic meetings, they recalled how during the war the holders of certifi¬ 
cates had loaned money, furnished supplies, and bled in the field, 
and how scurvily they had since been treated. Many veterans were 
represented to be languishing in debtors’ cells. As for paper money, 
a noisy party everywhere outside of Philadelphia held that the lack 
of a circulating medium was palpable. In the end, the two groups 
won, though not simultaneously. The funding bill was not enacted 
until the next year, 1786. It need be said only that it allowed the 
exchange of certificates, issued to Pennsylvanians by Congress, for 
State certificates, and that it made of the latter—the “new loan 
certificates”—the foundation of the State’s funded debt. The 
authors of the law were to the last angrily accused of jobbery, and 
there is no doubt that some pretty fortunes were made as by the 
waving of a wand. 81 

The paper money measure, however, was passed immediately— 
that is, on March 16, 1785. It provided for emitting £ 150,000, of 
which £100,000 was to be a fund for paying public creditors, and 
£50,000 was to be loaned at six per cent upon real estate security. 
To preserve the value of the bills, they were made receivable for all 
taxes, imposts, or debts due the State; while it was stipulated that 
funds for redemption, besides the interest on £50,000, should be set 
aside from the ordinary revenues in sums sufficient to redeem £20,000 
a year. 

Dickinson was right in saying there was no good reason for this 
issue of Pennsylvania paper. Peletiah Webster published an essay 
early in the year declaring and proving that there was a full circu¬ 
lating medium, and that labor and produce alike found a ready cash 
market. It was indeed hard to borrow money, and public securities 
of all kinds sold very low, but that was because the public, with 


81 These two groups largely united in pushing a third measure, the annulment of 
the charter of the Bank of North America; see Pa. Packet, March 9, 1785. The 
files of the Packet contain much upon the soft money movement; e.g., issues of March 
5, 8, and 18th. Some of the many complex financial and economic results of the 
funding law are evident from a complaint in the Pa. Gazette of February 3, 1790. 
This writer states that the funding law checked private loans of all kinds, for no 
one would lend money for 6 per cent, when the State gave 24 or 30 per cent, 
“according as the certificates were sold for 4s. or 5s. in the pound, which was 
their current price for several years after they were funded.’’ It let creditors loose 
upon their debtors, in order to purchase certificates with the money, and many 
farmers were ruined. It checked trade and manufacturing, for men employed ready 
capital in buying certificates. The weight of taxes required to carry out the law 
drove many families to the West and South. It took from realty the value that 
was given the certificates; and it restrained the sale of the State lands. 


522 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


good reason, distrusted all ordinary “security.” Inasmuch as the 
paper issued was not made a legal tender in payment of private 
debts, it created no profound disturbance; but the State had ample 
reason to rue it. 

For only a few months the bills passed on a par with specie. By 
midsummer of 1786, the depreciation had reached 12 per cent. In 
July of 1787, by concerted action, the banks and markets of Phila¬ 
delphia ceased to accept them. By the summer of 1788 the money 
had fallen so low that it had ceased altogether to be a medium, and 
was simply an article, of commerce. The public creditors were then 
petitioning that it be given currency again by making it receivable 
for local taxes as well as State taxes, but this was out of the ques¬ 
tion. 82 Since the State government accepted the bills at face value, 
they were in constant demand for discharging taxes and duties. The 
State thus lost in receiving them, and paying them out again at a 
discount; the officers of government lost by receiving them for 
salaries; and public creditors lost by receiving them as interest. 
Taxpayers who hoped that they would fall still further in value 
delayed paying their taxes so that they might take advantage of 
the fall. Since they could not be bought in outlying sections as 
readily as in Philadelphia, the people of remote rural districts had 
practically to pay a higher tax rate. Moreover, tax collectors were 
faced by the constant temptation to keep whatever specie came in, 
and substitute bills of credit for it at a neat profit. In all, despite 
the fact that up to September 10, 1788, no less than £87,000 of the 
bills had been redeemed and destroyed by the State, leaving only 
about £63,000 outstanding, they were a thorn in the side of the 
government. In the latter part of this year a subscription was set 
on foot for their purchase and destruction by public-spirited men, 
whom the State, of course, would be bound to repay. 

Why did New Jersey have recourse to paper money?—so Brissot 
de Warville asked Governor Livingston’s son in 1788. The State 
ships products to New York and Philadelphia, and thus draws money 
constantly from those cities. She is a creditor, and why does she 

83 The petitioners alleged that its depreciation was such as to cause “very great 
distress and loss to individuals; and, by giving hopes of further depreciation, to 
tempt great numbers of people to delay the payment of the debts, taxes, and customs 
due to the State.” It circulated only in Philadelphia, and very slowly there; and 
they thought that making it payable for local taxes would remedy this. For the 
slow depreciation of the bills, see Md. Journal, August 9, 1785, which says some 
advertisements give them a preference over specie, and the Pa. Packet of July 17 and 
18, 1787. The text of the paper money act is in Laws of Pa., 1810 Ed., II, Ch. 1526. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 523 

use the resource of a miserable debtor? The reason is simple, re¬ 
plied young Mr. Livingston. “At the close of the ruinous war that 
we have experienced, the greater part of our citizens were burdened 
with debts. They saw, in this paper money, the means of extri¬ 
cating themselves; and they had influence enough with their rep¬ 
resentatives to enable them to create it.” The clamorers for paper 
bills in the spring of 1786 threatened the courts with violence if they 
tried to collect debts, and some communities refused to elect any 
assessors in order to delay tax-collection. On May 26, 1786, a bill 
passed emitting £100,000. It was to be loaned on realty mortgages 
at six per cent, for twelve years, no one person receiving more than 
£100 or less than £25. The security was to be at least double the 
loan, and from the eighth to the twelfth years inclusive one-fifth of 
the principal was to be repaid annually; while the emission was 
made a legal tender for all private and public debts. This paper 
immediately depreciated; specie disappeared; and it became impos¬ 
sible to borrow money on the best security, the lender fearing repay¬ 
ment in the bills. 83 

“In North Carolina,” wrote Madison apropos of Pennsylvania’s 
experience, “the sum issued at different times has been of greater 
amount, and it has constantly been a tender.” North Carolina really 
fared worse than the Keystone State. We have noted that in 1783 
an emission of £100,000 was authorized. In November, 1785, 
another issue of the same amount was ordered, with the simple result 
that for several years the public and private finances in the State 
were staggered. In the House eight members, led by Maclaine and 
Hugh Williamson, signed a vigorous paper in opposition. 84 They 
pointed to the depreciation of the issue of 1783, a sure omen of the 
fate of the new money. Such a currency, to be a legal tender for 
all purposes, they said, strikes us with alarm for the honor of the 
State, the security of trade, and the safety of all honest men. They 
described the dangers with which it was fraught for civil servants, 
merchants, creditors, and for commerce, which was already much 
depressed. But the dominant radicals in the Legislature would not 
be denied; and when ordinary methods of putting the money into 


83 New Jersey also issued an irregular kind of paper currency, called “revenue 
money,” which had twenty-four years to circulate, and fell quickly. Brissot de 
Warville, “New Travels” (1788), Letter 6; N. Y. Packet, May 25, 1786; Acts of 
Gen. Ass. of N. J., 1785-86, 293-313; Pa. Packet, January 17, 1786. See an essay 
on New Jersey paper money by “Silver-Money” in the Pa. Gazette, October 14, 1788. 

8i N. C. State Records, XVII, 410-11. 


524 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


circulation proved slow, large purchases of tobacco were made by the 
State and paid for in paper at an excessive valuation. The result 
was what had been prophesied. Many men who had been doing 
an interstate or overseas business left for other parts. By November, 
1786, hard money was at a premium of fifty per cent. Nevertheless, 
one citizen wrote, “the wretched creditor is obliged to receive this 
paper trash for sterling debts, nay, frequently happy to receive it 
as the only liquidation he can get of accounts that have been standing 
for years.” 85 

Georgia was the fourth and last State whose experiment with paper 
money can be called unfortunate, though it was neither an extensive 
experiment nor one with alarming results. During the summer of 
1786 the Legislature authorized the issue of £50,000, part of which 
was to be used if an apprehended war with the Creeks occurred, and 
the remainder to pay the arrears due the State’s soldiers. Chatham 
County, in which lies Savannah, opposed the emission, but the 
planters and farmers carried it by a heavy majority. Loaded with 
debt, unable to obtain credit, with no specie available in whole com¬ 
munities, their distress was great. 86 An effort was made to support 
the issue by patriotic appeals; one captain bid for some of the first 
bills printed at the rate of nearly twenty-two shillings a pound; but 
the mechanics were rebellious. A meeting of sixty-six of them in 
Savannah, nearly the whole body in that town, resolved not to take 
the money, declaring that it had no better security than the paper 
already issued, which the State had called in at the rate of one silver 
dollar for one thousand paper dollars. Actually—hostilities with 
the Indians being postponed—only about £30,000 was printed. 
Thanks to this fact, and to the pledge of the large tract called the 
New Cession for its security, the bills, after some damaging fluctua¬ 
tions, were finally redeemed. 87 

In two States the emission of paper can be called, if not a success, 

85 A traveler reported in the Md. Gazette of July 29, 1785, that importation had so 
fallen off in North Carolina that men everywhere dressed in jeans and cotton stripes, 
women in cottons, of their own manufacture. See also a letter from North Carolina 
in the Mass. Centinel, November 25, 1786; and for the depreciation of the issue* of 
1783, S'. C. Gazette, July 15, 1784. Its accompaniment of sheer grafting made this 
issue of 1785 famous throughout America. The sum of £36,000 was reserved for the 
purchase of tobacco, which was to be sold for the reduction of the State’s share of 
the Continental debt. After great delays, blundering, and corruption, over £37,500 
was spent exclusive of fees, storage, and carriage, and the amount sold was less 
than the amount purchased. Boyd, “N. Ca.,” Ch. I. 

88 Pa. Packet, January 9, 1786. 

87 Marbury and Crawford, “Digest of Laws,” 379-80; Pa. Packet, January 9, 1786; 
N. Hampshire Mercury, October 25, 1786; N. Haven Gazette, September 14, 1786. 
Governor Telfair opposed this issue; Stevens, “Georgia,” II, 374. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 525 

at least quite harmless—South Carolina and New York. Both 
took precautions to see that the paper was kept at or near its face 
value; and in the former especially it could be pleaded that the 
issue was absolutely unavoidable. The South Carolinians had ex¬ 
cellent reason for seizing at any straw that promised economic and 
financial relief. The conditions among them in the fall of 1785 
were described by one witness as constituting “anarchy”: 

The produce of this country has borne no proportion to their enormous imports 
since the peace. Many of the inhabitants . . . being obliged to leave the country 

while the English had the ascendancy . . . returned home in a destitute, forlorn 

condition; and to supply their wants took up goods and other articles, wherever 
they could procure credit. These were charged about ioo per cent, more than the 
ready money price. Their mode of living, perhaps more profuse and luxurious than 
in any other part of the Continent, increased the evil. The day of payment arrives, 
arrests and imprisonment alarm the community, and every man becomes tremblingly 
alive all over for the misfortunes of his neighbors, expecting his own turn next. 

Thus the magnitude of the evil suggests a desperate remedy; they stop the course 

of the law, so that throughout this wealthy State, except in Charleston, the seat 
of government, a sheriff does not serve a writ, or levy an execution. 


Credit was absolutely dead in South Carolina in 1785. Stay laws 
passed in 1.782 and subsequent years suspended suits for all debts 
antedating the spring of 1782, until 1786, when one-fourth became 
payable. To illustrate the lack of money, it was stated that one man 
who owned four negroes had taken a fifth on his note, payable in 
three years, and that when the term expired in 1786, an execution 
was levied upon his estate, and all five negroes were sold for less 
than the original price of one. 88 Henry Laurens wrote in the spring 
of 1786 that he frequently had less than a dollar in cash, and during 
the same season the negroes on one of Edward Rutledge’s plantations 
were in danger of starvation. A succession of bad crops and desolat¬ 
ing freshets had conspired with the reduction of the export trade to 
make it impossible for planters or farmers to recover from the de¬ 
struction of the war, or to pay for the goods that they had ordered 
on credit; and the merchants were as badly off as the agriculturists. 89 

One utterly indefensible measure of the Legislature was the so- 
called Pine Barren Act of October 12, 1785. It authorized a debtor 
who was under prosecution to tender any kind of lands at two- 


88 Pa. Mercury, June 2 , 1786. , , , . 

88 A good account of the financial prostration of South Carolina may be found in 
Wallace. Laurens, 42S-30. Timothy Ford says in his Diary of the time (S. C. Hist, 
and Genealog. Mag., XIII), that a number of British merchants after the Revolution 
imported large cargoes of slaves from Africa, which the planters bought, paying only 
one-half or one-fourth down; thus a large part of the State fell deeply in debt. The 
merchants in 1784 began to insist rigidly upon payment, and an universal alarm took 
place” In some localities the sheriffs were defied, and one fiery planter, served with 
a writ, obliged the officer to eat it on the spot. What Ford says is fully confirmed 
by a writer in the Md. Journal, October 14, 1785. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


526 


thirds their value, their worth to be fixed by three independent 
arbiters; if the property so tendered exceeded the debt, the creditor 
was to give his bond for this excess, payable in six months. Un¬ 
principled men took advantage of the act to offer lands lying at such 
a distance that the expense of viewing and appraising them would 
nearly equal the debt; and a creditor frequently preferred relinquish¬ 
ing his claim to sending good money after bad. In the same way, 
men might tender personal possessions, and they sometimes assembled 
hay, corn, pigs, fodder, and so on far up-country, and called upon 
the Charleston merchant nearly two hundred miles away to trans¬ 
port the property to the sea. Two merchants advertising for a 
settlement of accounts due, early in 1786, stated in the press that 
all debts now had to be regarded as “nearly upon the same footing 
as debts of honor.” Laurens a few months later sighed for the 
time when everyone would be “out of debt and become honest 
again.” The Pine Barren Act was good only until the next meeting 
of the Legislature, and by it was allowed to become extinct. 90 

Much less objectionable, however, was^ the act of the autumn of 
1785 for issuing £100,000, this money going into circulation early 
the next year. More than 130 Charleston merchants, traders, and 
other men of substance pledged themselves to receive it as gold or 
silver. The bills were issued as loans to individuals, bearing interest 
to the State, and were not legal tender for private debts. The 
merchants loyally carried out their agreement. A slight depreciation 
soon set in from two causes: specie was in almost exclusive demand 
for foreign trade and travel, since the paper was not known outside 
the State; while the planters began demanding a higher payment for 
grain or indigo in paper than in specie, and thus lowered faith in it. 
But a mass-meeting of planters and merchants at the State House 
in the summer of 1786 checked the depreciation by a new agreement 
to regard the paper and specie as on an exact parity, and to 
cooperate better in maintaining that parity. The famous Hint Club 
was organized, to call upon those who gave a preference to specie 
with an emphatic hint to mend their ways. These expedients met 
with marked success. The paper held its value, was of great utility 


90 Ford’s Diary; Pa. Packet, June io, 1786; N. Y. Packet, November 28, 1785. The 
two merchants here spoken of (N. Y. Packet, May 4, 1786) were forced thus to plead 
tor payment because many of the duties and other payments to the State were de- 
mandedj by law, in specie. “We are willing to pay the treasurers,” they said, “but 
unaMe. The law is in S. C. Statutes at Large, Cooper Ed., IV, 710. From 1784 to 
1788 inclusive the annual tax bills were accompanied by the issue of indents, varying 
trom ±.64,000 to £125,000 annually, to facilitate tax payments. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 527 


to the hard-pressed planters, and returned a steady revenue to the 
State. Such was its success that in 1789, when specie dollars were 
pouring into Charleston, it was preferred as being more convenient 
to use. 91 

In New York there was a much stronger but quite futile opposition 
to paper money. The two parties met with in all States, one for and 
one against an emission, began forming in 1784, and were squarely 
aligned against each other by the end of 1785. The advocates of 
a paper issue were in the main a country party, and the opponents a 
city party. Naturally, the men with capital—creditors, importers, 
wholesale merchants, and professional men—were against any 
measure which would depreciate their holdings and cut their invest¬ 
ments in two. The pinched farmers and retail merchants, the 
small manufacturers, the laboring men, debtors everywhere, could 
point to a hundred symptoms of need for paper money. Every 
other goodman on the street or the country highway was in debt, 
and could not find the money to pay his obligations. Money lenders 
charged double interest, demanded double security, and insisted 
upon collecting their loans on the day they fell due. Lands and 
houses, put in the market by poor devils who had not a ready six¬ 
pence, brought only half their real worth. Why should honest citi¬ 
zens not be given an opportunity to borrow money from the State, 
paying a reasonable rate of interest, and thus tide themselves over 
till better times? Thomas Paine published a pamphlet attacking 
the fallacies of the paper money craze, and the ever watchful and 
sagacious Chamber of Commerce of New York, whose history is 
filled with so many acts of wisdom, published a petition of protest 
(February 13, 1786); but all efforts to stem the tide were in vain. 92 

Not that the sound money party failed to check the tide at first. 
In 1784 the Senate refused to pass a bill for emitting bills of credit 
(sums of £100,000 and £150,000 were proposed), and in 1785 it 
halted a bill for £100,000 which the House passed 22 to 18. In 
1786 the upper chamber still viewed an emission with reluctance, 


81 Md Journal Tan. 15, 1789. A new demand for an emission of paper, at least 
£300,000, found expression in the Legislature of the spring of 1789, its supporters 
coming from the interior. They said that the emission of 1785 had benefited the 
rich and that now the poor should have a turn. When a bold editor of the State 
Gazette poked fun at the scheme, the Legislature haled him before its bar and 
extorted an apology. Gazette , March 16, 1789. The paper money of 1785 was loaned 
on security of lands worth twice the value, or gold or silver plate worth twice as much; 
and was to be repaid in five years. Statutes at Large, IV, 712. . . 

83 N Y Packet February 16, 1786. The Chamber proposed that if the Legislature 
did issue* paper, ’it should not be a legal tender, so that it would not be to the 
interest of borrowers to see it depreciated. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


528 

though it formally admitted that “from the scarcity of money in this 
State, the property of debtors is daily sold on executions for a very 
inconsiderable part of its value, to the total ruin of such debtors and 
their families.” The House voted to issue £200,000, and the Senate 
amended the measure to make the sum £150,000, and to obliterate 
the clause which made the bills of credit a legal tender in certain 
circumstances. The Assembly refused to accept the amendments, 
however, and the sum of £200,000, equivalent to $500,000 Spanish- 
milled dollars, stood. 

It was loaned only upon excellent security, and was made a legal 
tender for private debt only in case of suits. When the first bills 
came from the press, the public was reluctant to take them, and a 
few men of wealth set an ostentatious example by going about to 
crowded inns and barrooms, demanding the bills in place of the more 
cumbersome specie. By the end of the year even the opponents of 
the paper issue had to admit that the credit of the bills was good. 
They fluctuated in value, and at times were at a discount of as 
much as ten per cent., but they remained a valid circulating medium. 
In midsummer of 1787 it was boasted that they were “universally 
received upon a par with gold or silver, in large or small quanti¬ 
ties.” 93 

And what of the Southern and Middle States which resisted the 
paper-money movement of 1785-86? In all it was strongly felty but 
two commonwealths it passed over harmlessly and without long- 
continued excitement: Virginia and Delaware. In the old Dominion 
the legislative session which terminated in January, 1786, showed— 
as Madison reported—a “considerable itch” for paper money, though 
no bill for it was introduced. “The partisans of the measure, among 
whom Mr. Meriwether Smith may be considered as the most zealous, 
flatter themselves, and, I fear, upon too good ground, that it will be 
among the measures of the next session.” Gold and silver were 
seldom seen. Had Virginians not evaded their debts to British 
creditors, great numbers would have been bankrupts. But the Legis¬ 
lature contented itself with delaying and weakening the tax pay¬ 
ments—this alone being a bit of folly which Madison thought the 
wisdom of seven sessions could not repair. 94 

93 See Legislative journals, Clinton’s papers, and the press. The N. Y. Advertiser, 
February 24, 1787, recounts much of the history of this paper money issue. The 
Pa. Packet, January 31, February 2, June 23, 1787, testifies to the good credit of the 
issue. 

94 Rjves, “Madison,” II, 78, 79; 143-48. Madison expected George Mason to lead 
the fight against paper money, and when Mason did not appear, he himself came 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 529 

In the Delaware Legislature in May, 1786, the paper money 
question was hotly debated. It was proposed to issue £21,000, and 
in the House the measure passed by a vote of 12 to 6. The Council, 
however, rejected the bill by a large majority. 95 Little Delaware’s 
financial policy, under the initial guidance of Dickinson, had been 
wise. In 1781, instead of issuing any “forty to one” money to its 
people, the State had sunk the whole quota of it by taxes paid into 
the Continental treasury, with a considerable surplus. It thus got 
rid of paper money altogether, and at the spring session of 1782, 
declared gold and silver the lawful money of the State. 96 

The State below New England in which the paper money struggle 
was fiercest and most protracted was Maryland. The debate on a 
proposed emission there was in full swing early in 1785. There 
was some specie in Baltimore, the soft money enthusiasts admitted, 
but there was almost none in the country towns. The rural districts, 
they argued, were producing much wealth which they found it im¬ 
possible to market. Flour and wheat were frequently stored to grow 
mouldy, and were more frequently sold by barter. Lumber, tar, 
pitch, and turpentine were almost altogether bartered, for no one 
could offer cash for them. 97 A Bostonian wrote 98 after a visit to 
Baltimore that “The state of affairs there is truly distressing— 
money vastly more scarce than here—credit sunk—and hardly any 
business doing. People seemed pretty unanimously to wish for a 
paper currency, which though it might not be a radical cure would 
at least prove a temporary succedaneum, until some effectual steps 
could be taken to turn the balance of trade in favor of America.” 
Baltimore felt her depression the more because she had been ex¬ 
periencing a boom. 

The opposition, however, was alert. One “Philadelphus” argued 
in June that the emission would injure the poor, and benefit only 
foreign traders and domestic speculators. The former would sell 
their merchandise easily and at high prices in Maryland, money 

forward with a powerful speech, the brief for which has been preserved (“Writings,” 
II, 279 ff.). By votes of 85 to 17 the Legislature both rejected the paper money 
proposal, and declared that an emission would be “unjust, impolitic, and destructive 
of public and private confidence, and of that virtue which is the basis of republican 
government.” The bill to make tobacco a “facility” for tax arrears was passed 
72 to 33. Madison himself, as he wrote his father (“Writings, II, 289) acquiesced 
in it to obviate more hurtful measures. 

85 Wilmington letter in N. Hampshire Mercury, August 9, i. 7 « 5 . 

86 Dickinson in the Pa. Packet, January 16, 1783. Dickinson claimed also for 
Delaware the honor of being the first to arrange for the equitable adjustment of 
debts on a scale of depreciation, and to stop all tender laws. 

87 Md. Journal, August 12, 1785. 

88 N. H. Mercury, August 9, 1785- 


530 THE AMERICAN STATES 

being plentiful. The latter would take care to make heavy purchases, 
as of land, in advance of the emission, giving notes payable at a 
date well in the future; and would thus double their own fortunes 
on the ruin of the sellers." “Current Money” argued that the 
planters needed not money, but sense and prudence. Many had 
mortgaged their land to buy slaves and to clear away timber, with 
the result that the Baltimore market had been flooded with produce 
and prices had been depressed much below the Philadelphia rates. 
Moreover, idleness had grown since the peace. “Many of the land¬ 
holders themselves, who till then were very laborious farmers and 
planters, have since that time hardly ever worked a single day, 
but strut about their farms and plantations like gentlemen, some 
of them with guns in their hands and dogs at their heels.” 100 

When the Legislature met in November, 1785, it was almost 
inundated with appeals for and against paper money. From Balti¬ 
more County came a petition in behalf of an emission signed by 
910 respectable names. 101 But the proposal failed and went over 
until 1786. The stone wall of opposition lay in the Senate, which, 
elected for five years, passed out of office within a few months. In the 
summer there came on the choice of electors for the Senate, and the 
electoral college named comprised many of the State’s ablest men— 
Matthew Tilghman, Thomas Sim Lee, George Plater, Samuel Chase, 
John Eager Howard, and others. It met in September, and—interest 
in the new Senate turning chiefly on the question whether it would 
be for or against paper money—chose the men who for the next half 
decade were to constitute the upper house. Never had the wisdom 
of those who devised Maryland’s peculiar plan of an indirectly 
elected Senate been better vindicated. The body as reconstituted 
was one of marked ability, including Stone, the two Carrolls, Thomas 
Johnson, Paca, Plater, George Gale, and Richard Ridgely. Most 
important of all, it was known to be, at least in the main, opposed 
to an issue of bills of credit. 102 

At the session of the autumn of 1786, the old question at once 
arose. On December 1 leave was granted in the House, 41 to 21, 
for bringing in a bill to emit paper money on loan, and the next 
fortnight was devoted to debate. 103 The views of the House majority 

99 Md. Journal, June 25, 1785. 

100 Idem, December 20, 1785. 

101 N. Y. Packet, January 2, 1786. 

103 Md. Journal, September 15, 22, 1786. 

108 N. Y. Advertiser, December 19, 1786. 


THE ST A TES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 531 


were completely fixed, and were later briefly described by it in an 
address to the people: 

The result of our opinions on this inquiry was, that you could not discharge your 
private and your public engagements; and that you must neglect your private obliga¬ 
tions or your public duty. . . . Your honor, welfare, and safety required that every 
exertion should be made to support the Union. We thought it imprudent and useless 
to levy on you further taxes, unless some expedient could be devised to assist you 
in the payment of them, and also in the discharge of your private debts.—In every 
State there ought to be as much circulating money as will represent all the property 
and labor bought and sold for cash; and the current money of every country ought 
always to be in proportion to its trade, industry, alienations, and taxes. . . . We are 
convinced that there is not a sufficient quantity of circulating specie in this State 
to answer the purposes of commerce alone because the chief produce of the country, 
tobacco and wheat, cannot command a proper and reasonable price; because lands, 
houses, and negroes will not sell for one half their actual value; and because specie 
cannot be borrowed unless at an exorbitant premium (from 20 to 30 per cent.) to 
carry on trade and manufacturing, or to cultivate or improve our lands. 104 


The State’s debts were heavy, declared the House, and the arrears 
of taxes alarmingly great. Marylanders owed the British about 
£400,000 sterling, or two-thirds as much as before the war, while 
it required £116,000 in specie annually to carry on the State govern¬ 
ment, and the State’s debt to the Dutch bankers must be reduced. 105 

The bill which the House majority prepared to meet these condi¬ 
tions was carefully drawn. It provided for the printing of paper to 
the amount of £350,000 current money, and for the circulation of 
£250,000 of it on loan at 6 per cent., secured by landed property of 
more than twice the value. Not more than £200,000 was to be in 
circulation at one time, unless the Governor and Council agreed 
that more would not depreciate the money. Each borrower was 
required to pay his interest and one-twentieth of his debt annually, 
and half of the interest and all of the accumulating twentieths were 
to be used to sink the emission. The paper was not to continue un¬ 
redeemed more than ten years. It was to be received for all taxes 
and duties due since March, 1784, and for all civil salaries; but it 


104 This address was published in the Md. Journal, February 2, 1787. 

106 The House estimated that Maryland’s share of the Continental expenditure fpr 
1786 exceeded £100,000 in specie, and that the annual expenses of government in 
MarylSd were about £16,000 in specie. Most of the State debt, except the sum of 
£45,700 due to the Messrs. Vanstaphorst, was supposed to be funded by bonds for 
confiscated British property, and interest on it need not be allowed for. But could 
the State raise £i?6, 0 P 0 o in specie in „ne year? The assessed valuation for all its 
property was only about ten million pounds in currency, and a tax of no less than 
one pound, eight shillings, fourpence, including the county tax of five shillings 
would be required on every one hundred pounds. This would have to be imposed at 
1 time when the annual imports were £600,000 in current money, and the exports 
^f tobacco wheat, corn, and lumber were about £538,333. “The great number of 
suits in the general courts, and in the several county courts, by British and domestic 
'reditors for the recovery of very large sums of money, convinced us of the 
inability’of many of you to satisfy these creditors; and we know that above eight 
hundred executions were issued against the State debtors in ? the last general court^ 
to compel the payment of the interest then due to the State. The Present State ot 
Maryland, by the Delegates of the People, 1787* 


532 THE AMERICAN STATES 

was not to be a tender for any debt, unless the contracting parties 
so agreed. The House intended, it said, to suspend the collection of 
tax arrears until £ 100,000 of the emission was in circulation. 

After a full debate, which converted some advocates of paper to the 
opposition, the bill passed the House, 37 to 25. It was accompanied 
by a measure which suspended executions against the body of the 
debtor and compelled the creditor to take substantial property for 
his debt at its actual worth; the courts had been crowded with suits, 
and this supplementary enactment carried by the smashing majority 
of 40 to 14. 106 

But when the paper money bill came up in the Senate, that body 
showed an entirely different spirit. Its debate, also exhaustive, 
resulted in the unanimous rejection of the measure. Then ensued 
an angry quarrel between the two branches. Look at New York, 
the House declared: there paper was emitted as we propose, on loan 
with landed security, and it passes at par with gold and silver unless 
for the purchase of these metals for export, when the difference is 
two and a half per cent. Look at Pennsylvania, where the paper 
also passes at par, except for the purchase of specie, when the dif¬ 
ference is from five to ten per cent. Your bill, rejoined the Senate, 
appears to us “utterly incompetent to afford relief.” After eight 
weeks, the House adjourned, though the Senate protested that the 
chief business of the session was unfinished—that delegates had not 
even been appointed to the impending Federal Convention. The 
House rejoined that the Senate alone was to blame, and the war of 
arguments and accusations was carried to the public. 

Annapolis was the center of the opposition to paper. Senators 
Stone and Charles Carroll of Carrollton drew up resolutions con¬ 
demning the emission bill, which were adopted at a meeting at Mann’s 
Tavern there. Judge Hanson framed instructions to the Annapolis 
Assemblymen to oppose the bill, and these also were adopted. Be¬ 
sides the three men named, Daniel, Carroll, Thomas Johnson, Plater, 
Ridgely, and the rich, battle-scarred John Eager Howard were 
prominent in the fight against paper. The advocates of soft money 
realized that Charles Carroll was the center of the opposition, and 
attacked him fiercely. Naturally, they alleged that his wealth in- 

108 The Senate saw that its worst features were not passed into law. For the 
rancor it aroused, see the Md. Journal, March 21, 1788: “It is downright robbery 
in a debtor to give his creditor land or negroes in payment of a debt contracted in 
gold or silver. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 533 


spired his attitude—he could loan money at outrageous rates, they 
said; he annually received £12,000 to £15,000 in interest; and he 
did not want his usurious business spoiled. 107 The dissensions rose 
to an alarming pitch, so that the courts in some counties were sus¬ 
pended, and here and there the two sides began to form military 
bodies. 

But though the question colored the elections for the Assembly in 
1787, it was so clear that the Senate would stand firm—and that the 
Assembly minority would encourage it to do so—that the question 
gradually passed out of men’s minds. There was an echo of it in 
the Federal Convention when Luther Martin, a disciple of Chase’s 
and always excitable, objected to the section of the Constitution 
which prohibited any State from emitting bills of credit. He believed 
that some States had received great benefit from paper issues, and 
that they might again at critical times be very advantageous, and 
even absolutely necessary. He also believed that States might some¬ 
times have to protect debtors from rapacious lenders, by passing 
laws partially to stop recovery in the courts, or to allow payment 
by the debtor in instalments, or by tender of property. Thus tena¬ 
ciously did a considerable number of men hold to pernicious economic 
theories. 108 

New England stood apart in this paper money agitation. It was 
the one section where violence actually broke out, and yet it was the 
section where the movement did the least harm, little Rhode Island 
alone yielding to it. Connecticut almost wholly escaped the infection, 
the land of steady habits having the guidance of men who were just 
as shrewd as old Governor Trumbull had been. On May 30, 1787, 
a debate took place in the House on a motion by a good Colchester 
farmer to grant leave for bringing in a tender law, and it was beaten 
142 to 22. “Many a sarcastic sneer arose,” said a contemporary, 
and “the disdain of honest men struck the spirit of paper money 
with terror and dismay.” 109 

The paper money crises in New Hampshire and Massachusetts 
occurred at the same time and took the same direction. The rural 
populations here felt the prevalent distress as keenly as the farmers 
of New York, or the planters of Georgia, and the petty merchants 


107 Md. Journal, March 2, 1787. 

108 Elliot’s “Debates.” I, 344 - 89 - 
108 Pa. Packet, June 21, 1787; N. 

Hist. Soc., I. 


Y. Advertiser, July 18, 1787; cf. N. Haven Colony 


534 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


were as great sufferers. In New England, as in the Middle States, 
there was no crop failure to play the role it played in parts of the 
South. The harvests in 1785 and 1786 were good, but the farmers 
asserted, with much truth, that no market could be found. Apples 
and pears rotted on the trees, wheat and maize could not be disposed 
of in the towns, meat and flaxseed could only be bartered in small 
quantities for the articles the farmer needed. To obtain cash to 
pay debts and taxes was almost impossible, and yet the creditors 
and tax-collectors were insistent. 110 The balance is lost between 
property and money, wrote one New Hampshire man; “insomuch, 
that an estate which formerly would have sold for £1000 and is 
allowed not to have depreciated in real use and utility, will not, at 
this day, command £300; and that money, which formerly could 
have been hired at six per cent., cannot be procured at three times 
that premium; nay, it cannot possibly be had at any rate, or any 
security.” European creditors pressed the Boston and Portsmouth 
merchants, the latter pressed the rural dealers, and the dealers began 
to sue the farmers and seize their property. 

The grumbling over taxes in Massachusetts was especially great, 
and yet the financial position of the State was not desperate. 111 Its 
domestic debt amounted to £1,326,446 s.16 d.2; its share of the 
Continental foreign debt to £353,925 s.7; and its share of the Con¬ 
tinental domestic debt to £1,162,200. However, against the last- 
named item there were large offsetting claims for money spent and 
service done. Considerable sums were expected from land sales in 
Maine and in the West. Shrewd statesmen in Massachusetts were 
therefore not staggered by the total of the figures given, about 
£2,850,000. When men spoke of repudiation, these leaders hastened 
to condemn the suggestion. “Can we be willing that the history 
of the American Revolution shall be blackened with the tale, that 
we refused to redeem the securities we had given to effect it, and 
shall our posterity hear of the event, because the perfidy of their 
ancestors exceeded their glory?” Some grumblers declared that the 
people were ignorant of what became of their taxes. But this was 


110 In one year after the war closed the population of 140,000 was asked to pay 
$1,000,000 in taxes. To encourage the inflow of specie, the Legislature exempted 
from practically all duties and port charges every vessel which brought in enough 'gold 
and silver to pay for its outward bound cargo; and from one-half of the duties if it 


of the Insurrec- 
233; Mass. Acts 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 535 

a mistake, it was answered, for no expenditures were concealed. The 
stipends of State officers were lower than in Provincial days. In the 
black year 1786 the legislature laid taxes aggregating only £466,225. 
But the hard fact was that, owing to the unjust tax system, the poor 
paid most of it. 

At the spring session of the legislature in 1786 a bill was presented 
to satisfy the clamor against lawyers as a set of bloodsuckers and 
trouble-makers—a clamor that had been raised in almost every State, 
but had been especially vehement in Massachusetts. This bill threw 
the courts open to all reputable persons, fixed the charges of at¬ 
torneys, and tried to set strict safeguards against champerty. The 
Senate refused even to consider it. A bill to make real and personal 
estate a legal tender was defeated in the House, 89 to 35. No 
paper-money bill was initiated, the only test of strength on the 
paper-money question being an imperfect one afforded by a foolish 
proposal to emit money and arrange for its depreciation at fixed 
periods and fixed rates. This brilliant plan was thrown aside by a 
vote of 99 to 19. In all, the session was reassuring to the champions 
of honesty and wisdom in finance, and it infinitely chagrined the 
malcontents and radicals. It brought on immediately the riotings 
and disturbances of which Shays’s Rebellion was the chief episode. 

These disorders were preceded, as a great signal gun, by the con¬ 
vention of delegates from fifty towns in Hampshire County which 
met at Hatfield on August 22, 1786. The western part of the State 
was especially aflame with the demand for cheap and easy money. 
Though this convention was intended primarily to issue a vigorous 
call for paper money, it drew up resolutions specifying nine other 
distinct grievances. One was the existence of the Senate, which it 
regarded not as a representative body, but an undue check on the 
representative body; one was the existing mode of representation; 
one the fact that officers of government were not annually dependent 
on the General Court for the amount of their salaries; one the 
existence of the unnecessary courts of Common Pleas and General 
Sessions; one the fact that the principal civil officers were not all 
annually elected by the General Court; one the excessive fees allowed 
judges; and three had to do with the use made of the impost and 
taxes, which the radical members of the convention held were mis¬ 
applied when any parts of them were employed to pay Continental 
requisitions or to redeem the promises made to Revolutionary sol- 


S36 THE AMERICAN STATES 

diers. In short, the paper money enthusiasts wished to give Massa¬ 
chusetts an ultra-democratic government like Pennsylvania’s, or 
worse, and to run it on the strictest pennypinching principles. The 
spirit that produced this gathering was also brewing violence. Late 
in August a mob prevented the session of the Court of Common 
Pleas in Hampshire County, and early the next month another 
forced the adjournment of the same court for Worcester County. 
Then Shays emerged, and everyone is familiar with what followed. 

The vigor with which Shays’s Rebellion was suppressed was a 
powerful argument in favor of State Constitutions which vested ample 
power in the executive. Governor Bowdoin displayed equal energy 
and sagacity. A proclamation which he issued on September 2 
showed his early comprehension of the situation, and encouraged all 
public officers in the performance of their duty. Five days later he 
called all the judges, councilors, and legislators into conference upon 
the measures to be adopted, and thereafter he never hesitated. 

Some men believed it illegal for the Governor to call out the 
militia until the Legislature had declared a state of rebellion, while 
others doubted whether the militia could be trusted. But Bowdoin 
kept the sheriffs in close touch with him, and placed armed forces in 
readiness at points where outbreaks were feared. In November the 
arrest of the first ringleaders was ordered, and before the middle of 
the month Bowdoin had reviewed 2000 militia and a number of 
volunteers at Cambridge. So alarmed was Congress that under a 
pretence of raising troops against the Indians, it voted to enlist 
1300 men to save Massachusetts, but this was unnecessary. At the 
height of the crisis, as the year 1787 opened, Bowdoin ordered a 
general muster of 4400 men, while he obtained private loans totalling 
more than £5000; and the suppression of the revolt quickly followed. 

Although this outbreak is often spoken of as utterly reprehensible, 
there was much to excuse it. The tax burden was most unfairly 
distributed, not only because of the poll tax and the failure to levy 
upon trade, but because the assessments in the western counties 
were too high. The town of Greenwich computed that during each 
of the five years preceding 1786 the farmers had paid in taxes the 
entire rental value of their land. Many farms were being sold at 
one third their value to satisfy debts and tax-liens. Immigration 
into Massachusetts fell off, while emigration to upper New York 
and other favored States increased steadily. The scarcity of specie 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 537 

had caused the passage of a tender act in 1782, by which cattle 
and other commodities could be used to satisfy debts, but the sales 
of this property usually fetched little. In saying that the State gov¬ 
ernment favored the vested interests, the malcontents brought a 
charge which contained much truth. In the end, Shays’s Rebellion 
accomplished three results. It not only did much to frighten 
Americans into approving the Federal Constitution, and to increase 
the prestige of a well-centralized form of State government, but it 
brought about a number of healthful reforms in Massachusetts. 
The most notable, which we describe elsewhere, was the overhauling 
of the whole tax system. 112 

The reaction against Shays’s Rebellion was of great benefit in 
calming the paper money fever all over the nation. By an early 
date in February, 1787, complete quiet had been restored in the 
State. The Legislature had already published a popular address, 
in which it showed how far the State’s financial condition was from 
being alarming, and rebutted the current argument that there was 
too little circulating medium. “Immense sums have been expended 
for what is of no value,” said the General Court, “for the gewgaws 
imported from Europe and the more pernicious produce of the West 
Indies; and the dread of a paper currency impedes the circulation 
of what remains.” “At the close of the war we greedily adopted 
the luxurious modes of foreign nations. Altho’ our country 
abounds with all the necessaries of life, the importations from abroad, 
for our own consumption, have been almost beyond calculation.” 

The discontent in New Hampshire in 1785-86 was of a piece with 
that in Massachusetts. In the autumn of the former year a tender 
law was passed to save poor debtors from jail or from utter penury. 
By its terms the debtor might offer his creditor, whenever an 
execution for debt was attempted, either real or personal property 
in satisfaction of his obligation. If the creditor did not wish to take 
it, he could refuse, and at the expiration of a year levy upon any 
property of the debtor which he could find. The result might have 
been foretold. Persons known to have a large property, one corres¬ 
pondent informed the outside world, in many instances await the 
sheriff with a broad grin. They have nothing to turn out except a 
few articles of no possible value to the money-lender. Their live 
stock, furniture, and implements have been in part hidden and in 

113 Mass. Acts and Laws, 1786, pp. 368, 504, 5 ”. 5 * 3 . 5 26. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


538 

part, together with their acres, made over to a third person; “so 
that a creditor had better relinquish his demand than be at the 
expense of a suit.” And as another writer observed, money grew 
scarcer than ever; “for as far as goods and real property were sub¬ 
stituted as a medium in commerce, so far specie, of course, ceased 
to circulate; and credit being thus injured, the moneylenders turned 
their keys on that cash which might otherwise have been loaned 
to the needy.” 113 But in spite of the cheats, many creditors chose 
to press their suits, until the courts were jammed. 

The Legislature which met on September 13, 1786, was distinctly 
impressed by the discontent and suffering 114 which its members saw 
in many communities, and prepared in detail a plan for a paper 
issue, which it laid before the towns. It was proposed to emit 
£50,000 in bills of credit, of which £10,000 should be used for 
Government expenses, and the remaining £40,000 be loaned on 
landed security of value double the loan, and at six per cent, interest. 
No one person should be loaned more than £150, or less than £50, 
and payments of principal should be so arranged that the whole loan 
would be repaid in six years. Taxes should be levied to sink in four 
annual payments, 1789-92, the £10,000 appropriated for State ex¬ 
penses. The money was not to be a tender for private debts. It 
will be seen that this was a moderate and reasonable plan for a 
paper issue, evincing a sound caution learned in the Revolutionary 
disasters. But it was more cautious to make no emission at all, and 
the soundest part of the State insisted upon the fact. Meetings in 
Portsmouth and other towns promptly resolved that the paper money 
plan was unwise. The resolutions of Exeter present the case for the 
opposition in representative terms. They declare that the emission 
would drive gold and silver out of circulation; that the guarantees 
against depreciation were insufficient, inasmuch as the certificates 
issued to soldiers in evidence of the State’s debt, though equipped 
with an even better security for redemption, had fallen much below 
face value; and that the fate of the “new emission” of 1780, worth 
one-third as much as specie, was a plain warning. Finally, Exeter 
questioned the motives of the paper money leaders. Many of them, 
said the resolutions, were eager to obtain depreciated paper “to an¬ 
swer their fraudulent ends” by paying off their debts cheap; they 

^Letter from N. H. in Pa. Mercury, June 2, 1786; N. Hampshire Mercury, Sep- 
tember 27, 1786, which gives an excellent account of the disorders. 

14 See N. H. Mercury, Sept. 6, 1786. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 539 


would never rest till they had made it a tender for all obligations. 

In the latter part of September there was a certain amount of 
quite bloodless rioting in and near Exeter, easily checked by Governor 
Sullivan. In the first days of 1787 the returns from all the towns 
upon the paper money proposal were counted, and a heavy majority 
was found against it. Action taken at the next session of the Legisla¬ 
ture emphasized the victory of the conservatives. It was voted that 
the government had no right to make paper money a legal tender for 
debts already contracted, and that no new issue of bills of credit 
should be made. 

Rhode Island alone yielded to the paper money mania. A good 
old divine, Dr. McSparran, once remarked that Rhode Islanders 
were the only people on earth who had hit on the art of enriching 
themselves by running in debt. 115 The debt of the little State in 
1783 was estimated at $700,000, or about $13 for every man, woman, 
and child. 116 The British occupation of Newport had cost $400,000, 
for half a thousand houses had been destroyed and whole villages 
driven to take refuge on the mainland. 117 The thriving commerce of 
that town, Bristol, and Providence had been almost swept from the 
seas; and the country people did not know how to pay their taxes 
or mortgages. It was only natural for this population, more illiterate 
than that of the other New England States, to conclude that its salva¬ 
tion lay in the means to which Dr. McSparran referred. In January, 
1785, the paper money advocates petitioned the Legislature for an 
issue of bills, but were rebuffed. Irritated but not discouraged, they 
perfected their organization, and set to work with such energy that 
they completely dominated the Legislature of 1786. 

That spring an emission of £ 100,000 was authorized, and soon 
began to appear from the presses. It was to be given to borrowers 
who would pledge double the value of the loan for its repayment, 
pay four per cent, interest for seven years, and agree to reimburse 
the State within fourteen years. The farmers and other debtors 
hastened to obtain their share of the money, and the rest of the com¬ 
munity hastened with equal alacrity to declare their unwillingness to 
accept it at face value. By August, recorded one hater of rag money, 
the bills had ceased to have any real currency; “only the unprin¬ 
cipled, who are involved, and a few small traders or brokers for 


«■ Updike, “Narragansett Church,” 51 5 - 118 Fidd, m , 226. . 

117 Bates “R I. and the Formation of the Union,” 115. The forests on the island 
had been felled, the farm lands laid waste, and 2000 persons forced to flee as refugees. 


540 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


them, negotiating it in order to tender for legal debts.” When so 
negotiated, it was worth from one-half to one-fourth as much as 
specie. Men who held provisions, clothing, or other commodities 
would part with them only for hard money. 

The struggle that ensued between supporters of the bills of credit, 
and those who resolutely refused to take them, moulded the politics 
of the State during four years. Forcing acts were passed to punish 
those who refused to sustain the credit of the new money; when the 
Supreme Court declared the second of these acts unconstitutional, 
four of the judges were dismissed; and a new forcing act was framed, 
embodying a test oath and depriving recalcitrant citizens of their 
civil and many other rights. This impossibly drastic piece of legisla¬ 
tion, however, was overwhelmingly defeated by the Legislature in 
November, 1786. Meanwhile, the debtors of Rhode Island hastened 
to take advantage of the situation by laying the paper before their 
creditors. The newspapers by September were full of advertisements 
by the justices of courts, certifying that bills of credit had been 
lodged with them to pay bonds, mortgages, and notes. One single 
newspaper issue contained advertisements in which more than 
£783, 118 lawful money, due on thirteen obligatory notes, was ten¬ 
dered. The form in which these advertisements were couched gave 
the Rhode Islanders a nickname which clung to them for years—the 
name of “Know Ye” men. “To all whom it may concern,” the 
notices began, “know ye, that Wm. Doe, of Providence, in the 
county of Providence, merchant, on the 31st day of August last, 
lodged with me the sum of £491 lawful money, due to Richard Roe, 
of Providence aforesaid. . . 

The stoppage of business and the public excitement were gradually 
mitigated, but the opposition to the paper as a legal tender increased. 

A town meeting in Providence in the early part of 1789 denounced 
the employment of it to pay debts at face value as “abominably 
wicked and unjust,” and renewed the instructions which had bound 
the representatives of that little city to fight for “a repeal or 
alteration.” The paper money had by that time depreciated, in 
trade, to one-twelfth its face value, while the two neighboring States 
had made it impossible for Rhode Islanders to collect debts from 
their citizens. Finally, in the autumn of 1789, the Legislature re¬ 
pealed the law making the bills a legal tender at par, and fixed the 

118 Pa. Packet, September 23, 1786. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 541 

value at which it should be received by creditors, in satisfaction of 
awards in lawsuits, at one-fifteenth the value of specie. 119 

But in early State finances the darkest hour was just before the 
dawn. Even while the States were gripped by the paper money 
spasm, evidences of returning prosperity began to be discernible. In 
August, 1786, just before Shays’s rebellion, when every rascally 
South Carolina debtor had taken advantage of the Pine Barren Act, 
when the angry battle of the two Maryland houses was beginning, 
Washington wrote Luzerne: “The people at large (as far as I can 
learn), are more industrious than they were before the war. Economy 
begins, partly from necessity and partly from choice and habit, to 
prevail. The seeds of population are scattered over an immense 
tract of western country. In the old States, which were the theatres 
of hostility, it is wonderful to see how soon the ravages of war are 
repaired. Houses are rebuilt, fields enclosed, stocks of cattle, which 
were destroyed, are replaced, and many a desolated territory assumes 
again the cheerful appearance of cultivation. In many places the 
vestiges of conflagration and ruin are hardly to be traced.” 120 This 
was true. Shrewd State leaders were able to take advantage of the 
fact in adjusting taxes and tax collections. After 1786 we hear less 
of huge arrears and of wholesale evasions. Tench Coxe was able to 
write in 1794 that the public debt was smaller in proportion to 
wealth and population than that of any other civilized land, and 
that “the United States (including the operations of the individual 
States) have sunk a much greater proportion of their public debt in 
the last ten years than any other nation in the world.” 121 

When the new Federal Government went into effect, in no State 
was the debt appallingly high, and in some it was already low. In 
September, 1789, the national House asked the States to transmit 
memoranda of their public debts, and six did so, bearing dates be¬ 
tween January 1, 1789, and April 1, 1789. The highest debt reported 
was South Carolina’s, which amounted to $5,386,232.05. Next came 

119 Tardy justice was done the State’s creditors in 1791, though at no cost to the 
State. The Legislature ordered that payment of the State debt, made in depreciated 
paper, should be reduced to specie; the difference between the original value of the 
debt and the sum paid upon it in paper money then to be covered by a note. This 
note was then, under the Assumption Act of Congress, transferred to the Federal 
Government to be discharged by it. Field, III, 228. 

i2° “Writings,” XI, 48-50. 

121 “A View of the United States,” Ch. 16. It must be remembered that the heavy 
depreciation of State paper made it easy to amortize the debt which it represented. 
New Hampshire, for example, early bought up its State bills at the rate of one 
hundred to one, and in 1794 paid five shillings on the pound for bills of the “new 
emission of 1780.” Barstow’s “N. Hampshire,” 302-03. 


542 THE AMERICAN STATES 

Massachusetts, whose debt was $5,226,801.29. The debt of Virginia 
was third, being $3,680,743.02, and Connecticut was hard on her 
heels, with a debt of $1,951,173, while New York had a debt of 
$1,167,575. New Jersey alone reported a burden of less than a 
million—$788,680. No accounts were received from the other States, 
but Hamilton found data for estimating the loads borne by three— 
he placed Pennsylvania’s at $2,200,000, exclusive of the Continental 
debt she had assumed, Maryland’s at about $800,000, and New 
Hampshire’s at about $300,000. 122 We can easily add authoritative 
figures for the three other important States. A legislative sub¬ 
committee in North Carolina placed the total State debt at 
$3,480,000; 123 the debt of Rhode Island in 1787 was roughly 
$510,000; 124 and that of Georgia in midsummer of 1786, as Governor 
Telfair informed the Legislature, fell a little short of a million 
dollars. 

South Carolina’s debt, so much the greatest in the Union, was 
after all only about $22 for every resident of the State, black or 
white. That of North Carolina was less than $9 per capita, Vir¬ 
ginia’s almost exactly $5, and New York’s below $3.50. It will be 
seen that the three great Southern States had the heaviest aggregate 
debts, that the two chief New England States came next, and that 
the two greatest Middle States formed the third group. The size of 
the State obligations was very fairly proportioned to the ability of 
the several States to pay—for at this time the population of the 
South much exceeded that of the North. 

That by 1789 the States did not feel oppressed by their financial 
burdens there is ample evidence. The Virginia Legislature in the 
fall of 1787 had provided a safety fund for the gradual extinction 
of the public debt. In 1790, protesting against assumption, it 
declared that a large part of the Old Dominion’s liabilities had 
already been discharged, and that measures had been taken to afford 
the most certain prospect of extinguishing the whole at a period not 
far distant. 125 When Maryland in 1784 was debating a bill to 

123 Am. State Papers, “Finance,” I, 28-29. 

133 Report in S. C. Gazette, February 17, 1789; see also N. C. State Records, XXI, 
1059 ff. 

124 Field, III, 227. 

125 Amer. State Papers, “Finance,” I, 90. The whole Virginia revenue system was 
revised in 1787, and the State strained every nerve to pay off its debt. Its gross 
receipts in 1787 were £305,244. The “regular disbursements” were much greater 
than the ordinary expenses, showing that the interest-bearing debt was rapidly being 
paid; while by the special certificate tax the floating debt was fast reduced, £328,693 
being discharged in 1785-90. It is not strange that the Legislature protested so vigor¬ 
ously against assumption. W. E. Dodd, in Va. Hist. Mag., X. 


THE STATES AND THEIR MONEY AFFAIRS 543 

establish funds for paying the State debt within six years, Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton protested that, if the buyers of confiscated 
British property were made to hand over the purchase money 
promptly, the State debt might be wiped off the ledgers sooner. The 
Massachusetts Legislature in 1786 was hopeful of extricating the 
Bay State from debt within a few years. New York’s financial posi¬ 
tion improved rapidly: addressing the Legislature in January, 1787, 
Governor Clinton declared that “very considerable reductions” had 
lately been made in the sums owed to citizens of the State, and that 
it was evident that the measures adopted to clear away the whole 
obligation, “when carried fully into execution, will be found to answer 
the expectations which were formed of them.” 

Thus the States were able to begin their careers under the Federal 
Constitution, in advance of Hamilton’s assumption measure, with a 
genuinely hopeful financial outlook. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 

When the Revolution ended, the States were united, in Wash¬ 
ington’s words, by a rope of sand. Not only were the Articles of 
Confederation a makeshift plan of union, but the very spirit of union 
seemed wanting. The States had fought beside each other without 
any notable disharmony. But they were far from being a closely- 
bound, affectionate family, and in the first years of peace they were 
to exhibit much petty jealousy and not a little actual quarrelsome¬ 
ness. Each State and section had its own interests; their political 
and economic differences seemed to be growing; and in 1783 the 
general feeling was that any hope of close union was rather senti¬ 
mental than practical. The drafting of even the weak Articles of 
Confederation was, as Congress declared, “attended by uncommon 
embarrassments and delay.” It stated that “to form a permanent 
union, accommodated to the opinions and wishes of so many States, 
differing in habits, produce, commerce, and internal police, was found 
to be a task which nothing but time and reflection, conspiring with 
a disposition to conciliate, could mature and produce.” 

There were certain general rather than particular factors making 
against a firm union—the memory of colonial quarrels, the sectional 
prejudices which have some existence in nearly all countries at 
nearly all times, and the influence of a political philosophy which 
did not believe that large confederations were practicable. The first 
was by no means unimportant. Till a few years before the Revolu¬ 
tion, no real sense of American nationality existed among the col¬ 
onists. They often called themselves Englishmen or British subjects; 
they were Carolinians, Pennsylvanians, or New Englanders; but they 
felt little need for a term applicable to all the colonists, and the 
colonists alone. The New Englanders regarded themselves as a 
fairly homogenous, united body, Rhode Island alone falling outside 
the sisterhood. A more tenuous bond of sectional feeling was man- 

544 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 545 

ifest in the Middle Colonies, and another in the South. But there 
was no genuine community of sentiment between the Boston mer¬ 
chant and Virginia planter, the Georgia drover and Pennsylvania 
farmer. Their regard for one another was comparable to the regard 
of the present-day Australian for the Canadian or South African. 

This disjunction struck the later European travelers forcibly. 
Kalm, the Swede, noted in 1749-50 that the Colonies did not always 
help each other in their wars. Frequently, “while some Provinces 
have been suffering from their enemies, the neighboring ones were 
quiet and inactive, and as if it did not in the least concern them.” 
There were instances, he added, “of Provinces who were not only 
neuter in these circumstances, but who even carried on a great trade 
with the Power which at that very time was attacking and laying 
waste some other Provinces.” Burnaby, who traveled a decade after 
Kalm, thought that fire and water were not more antagonistic than 
some of the different Colonies. Nothing could exceed their mutual 
jealousy. “In short, such is the difference of character, of manners, 
of religion, of interest of the various Colonies, that I think, if I am 
not wholly ignorant of the human mind, were they left to themselves, 
there would soon be civil war from one end of the continent to the 
other.” It would be easy to multiply expressions of the same view 
by colonists themselves. Otis, in his answer to the Halifax Libel of 
1765, prayed that the Provinces might never prove undutiful to 
mother England. Such a day would usher in “a terrible scene. Were 
these Colonies left to themselves to-morrow, America would be a 
mere shambles of blood and confusion before little petty States could 
be settled.” 1 

A favorite Tory argument in the opening days of the Revolution 
was that civil war among the Colonies, if they became independent, 
was inevitable. Galloway argued in the first Continental Congress 
that the danger was always present of open hostilities. “They are 
at this moment only suppressed by the authority of the parent state; 
and should that authority be weakened or annulled, many subjects 
of unsettled disputes, and which in that case can only be settled by 
an appeal to the sword, must involve us in all the horrors of civil 
war.” 2 In Maryland, the Tories declared that “Our independency 
may produce endless wars among ourselves, and with them, a certain 

1 For Kalm’s view, see Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” III, 460 ff.; for Burnaby’s Idem, 5 2; 
for Otis’s, “Answer to the Halifax Libel,” 16. 

* See Journals Cont. Cong., Sept. 28, 1774 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


546 

loss of liberty is to be sustained from our foreign foes.” 3 In Vir¬ 
ginia they asserted, as a patriot remarked, that the destruction of 
“the finest constitution in the world” would bring “a dreadful train 
of domestic convulsions in each republic; of jealousies, dissensions, 
wars, and all their attendant miseries, in the neighboring republics; 
in which forms of government they seem to imagine that Nature 
breeds: 

All monstrous, all prodigious things. . . . 

Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.*’ 4 

In justice to these Tories, it must be remembered that a few years 
after peace sober patriots were echoing their words. Knox wrote 
Washington early in 1785 that “The different States have not only 
different views of the same subject, but some of them have views 
that sooner or later must involve the country in all the horrors of 
civil war.” 5 Gerry, refusing to sign the Constitution, declared that 
he feared a civil war among the States. 6 Others, signing it, went 
home to utter sentiments identical with that long attributed to Wash¬ 
ington when the Convention rose—that if this instrument was re¬ 
jected, probably another would never be made in peace; “the next 
will be drawn in blood.” Before the Federal Convention met, the 
Connecticut Courant said that if the Union were dissolved, “It is by 
no means an improbable supposition that real and imaginary injuries 
would occasion mutual complaints and accusations among the States; 
that they would become more and more unfriendly; that animosities 
would begin, and rise higher and higher; that fresh provocations 
would embitter the minds of the people in one State against those in 
another; that . . . they would have recourse to arms; that the war 
becoming more fierce, one side, in danger of being conquered, would 
call a foreign nation to its aid; that the foreigners would be vic¬ 
torious, subdue those States which were hostile to them, and oppress 
those whom they came to assist.” 7 One Maryland politician set a 
date to his prediction. Without a stronger union, he averred, civil 
war would ensue “in less than ten years.” 8 

3 Md. Journal, July 22, 1777. 

4 Va. Gazette, April 12, 1776. 

3 Drake, “Knox,” 145-46. 

9 See Austin’s “Gerry,” II, 44. 

7 Quoted in N. Y. Journal, March 2 9, 1787. 

' Geo ?8e L«x, quoted in Md. Journal, April 4, 1788. See R. D. W. Connor, 
Cornelius Harnett,” 186, for Harnett’s view during the Revolution of the possibility 
of civil war after it closed. See the “Life and Works of Fisher Ames,” II 370 for 
Al ? e \ 9 9 , °P mi , on - Young Hamilton warned readers (Continentalist, No. 3, August o, 
1781) that the consequences of unrestrained rivalry among the greater States might 
be bloodshed. A schism once introduced, competitions of boundary and rivalships 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 


547 


I. General Causes of State Friction 

The subjects of dispute between the different Colonies make up a 
varied list. Trade was one. The first Penn had to complain that 
goods exported to his Province by ships which touched at Maryland 
ports were compelled by agents of the Calverts to pay a duty of X 

ten per cent, there. At about the same time the Proprietaries of 
East New Jersey made a similar complaint regarding New York. 
Governor Spottswood of Virginia registered a protest with the home 
authorities when traders from his Province passing through South 
Carolina were made subject to special charges imposed there. 

Another theme of bickering between almost every pair of adjacent 
Provinces was the boundary lines. Connecticut, for example, quar¬ 
reled with every one of her neighbors over territorial questions. The 
Massachusetts line had originally been run by two “mathematicians” 
employed by the Bay Colony. These ingenious gentlemen first fixed 
a starting point for the line near the southernmost point of the 
Charles River, and then, preferring a boat trip to a tramp through 
woods infested with Indians and wolves, sailed around Cape Cod 
and up the Connecticut River to a point which they thought oppo¬ 
site that of their commencement—erring on the safe side for Massa¬ 
chusetts, which they gave an eight-mile strip of Connecticut land. 

The resultant dispute endured for a century and a half, or till well 
after the Revolution . 9 As for the Rhode Island line, its dizzy uncer¬ 
tainties gave rise to Rufus Choate’s witty remark: “The commission¬ 
ers might as well have decided that it was bounded on the north by 
a bramble bush, on the south by a blue-jay, on the west by a hive 
of bees at swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with 
firebrands tied to their tails.” Frequently the quarrels were im¬ 
portant, involving valuable lands and taxation rights, and they some¬ 
times became ugly; at the very outbreak of the Revolution one 
between Virginia and Pennsylvania was ready to cause bloodshed. 

In the old French wars, intercolonial quarrels and heartburnings 
were numerous. At their worst, they inspired accusations by one 
Colony that citizens of another aided the foe. At their mildest they 

of commerce will early afford pretexts for war”; and European nations would interfere. 
“Unitas,” in the N. .Y. Packet, March 14, 1785, used the same argument. “Should 
this chain ever be broken—good God, what issues of death and misery lurk under 
the dreadful event!” 

8 Clark’s “Conn.,” 175 ff. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


548 

involved nothing more than the reproaches cast by the northern 
Provinces upon the Southern in the Seven Years’ War for the com¬ 
parative slenderness of the effort put forth by the latter; or disputes 
like that of Virginia and Pennsylvania over the route to be taken by 
Forbes against Fort Duquesne. Again, there was material cause 
for colonial ill-feeling in questions of religion. The Quakers of 
Pennsylvania and Catholics of Maryland could not regard unruffled 
the maltreatment of their co-religionists elsewhere. Other disputes 
arose from mere prejudice. Thus in 1760 Lewis Morris, father of 
Gouverneur Morris, declared in his will that he wished his son given 
the best education available in England or America, outside Con¬ 
necticut; the boy must be kept from that Province lest he imbibe 
the “low craft and cunning so incident to the people of that coun¬ 
try.” 10 

How deeply provincial and sectional jealousies, based on differ¬ 
ences of society and manners, cut, was shown as soon as Washington 
took command. Southern soldiers stood as a clan apart; the troops 
of the Middle Provinces regarded each other with a cordiality not 
felt for slaveholders or for frostbitten Yankees; and the New Eng¬ 
landers, whom Admiral Warren had found in the last French War 
the quickest to assert their rights as Englishmen, showed a coldness 
to other breeds. Complaint was soon heard among the Massachu¬ 
setts and Connecticut regiments that the men of other sections 
habitually called them “damned Yankees.” 11 An able North Caro¬ 
lina surgeon stationed at Fishkill early in the war wrote a member 
of Congress that he found the manners of the New York fighters 
“abhorrent,” thought the whole people a “damned generation,” and 
longed to get clear of them. 12 However, North Carolina soldiers 
themselves were in low esteem in some other States. At Valley Forge 
their indolence made them the last soldiers to shelter themselves 
with good huts, and even fellow Southerners reproached them. 13 
When the transfer of the war to the Middle States led officers from 
all parts of the country into Pennsylvania, much indignation was 

10 Channing’s “United States,” III, 468. 

11 “And thank God I am not a Yankey. . . . For God’s sake keep our troops 
together and keep them out of this damned country if possible.” Letter of Colonel 
Wm. Thompson of Pennsylvania, before Boston, January 2 5, 1776; Pa. Mag. Hist., 
XXXV, 305. ^ Letters of General Persifor Frazer of Pennsylvania characterize the 
Yankees as “a set of low, dirty, griping, cowardly, lying rascals,” and show that 
many Pennsylvanians had a sneaking fear that after beating the British, the New 
Eingland troops would try to “conquer the other Provinces.” Idem XXXI, 133-37. 

13 N. C. State Records, XIV, 49-50. 

18 Army Correspondence of John Laurens, 100. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 549 


voiced at the supineness there displayed. The Yankees may not all 
be heroes, wrote a Connecticut officer from Bucks County late in 
1776; but he believed they “will not behave in the damned cowardly, 
rascally manner the people of this country have.” 14 

Washington was thoroughly self-contained, but there is evidence 
that he found it a profound shock to be set down suddenly as com¬ 
mander in a camp made up almost wholly of New Englanders. He 
wrote to Lund Washington that “they are an exceedingly dirty and 
nasty people.” He thought that the Massachusetts troops in especial 
had gained at Concord and Bunker Hill a reputation they did not 
deserve, and he rated their officers as indifferent or bad. The men 
might fight well if properly led, but at Bunker Hill they had failed 
to gain a complete success because they were poorly captained and 
imperfectly supported. He accused the Yankees of trying to monop¬ 
olize the commissions in the army beleaguering Boston, and he went 
on — a ii this privately, of course—to denounce other vices. Within 
three months he had found it necessary to break one colonel and 
five captains for cowardice or theft. 15 

On the whole, the troops of the Middle and Southern States tended 
to draw together in a common unfriendliness toward the New Eng¬ 
landers. These sections had certain aristocratic traits and institu¬ 
tions in common, and resented both the leveling democracy and 
the moral narrowness of many New Englanders. Among the Yankee 
troops the officers were elected by the privates, and few belonged to 
the class of “gentlemen.” Below the Connecticut line, officers were 
appointed in the ordinary British fashion, and according to British 
traditions prided themselves on their gentility. Old Israel Putnam, 
whose heroism and ability none doubted, excited disrespect among 
the Southerners when he rode about at the siege of Boston in much 
the same dress he had worn when he left his furrow at the news of 
Lexington. With an old hat, no coat, rolled-up sleeves, and a short 
sword hanging from a strap around his broad shoulders, he shocked 
young officers who had bought resplendent uniforms in Philadelphia 
or Baltimore. 16 Washington exerted himself to have the rules for 
selecting officers altered by Congress to make a wider field of choice 


14 Corr. and Journals of S. B. Webb, I, 174-75- n , 

18 Washington’s letter is in the Corr. and Journals of S. B. Webb, I, 92-97. Graydon 
accused the Yankee officers of being shockingly mercenary, and Washington wrote 
that “the Massachusetts people suffer nothing to go by them that they can lay their 

ha i# d T r eve°lyan’s “American Revolution,” Pt. II, Vol. I, 198 . 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


550 

possible, and he expressed a wish that commissions should go as far 
as possible to “gentlemen.” However, Yankee views also had to be 
humored, and General Schuyler, a rich and stiff patroon, lost the 
command against Burgoyne because he was disliked by the New 
England men. 17 Their militia would not fight under him, for they 
remembered him from the Seven Years War; and Congress, in alarm, 
gave the command to Gates. Graydon has told us that Schuyler’s 
haughtiness was indeed plain: 

That he should ha«e been displeasing to the Yankees, I am not at all surprised; 
he certainly was at no pains to conceal the extreme contempt he felt for a set of 
officers who were both a disgrace to their stations and the cause in which they acted. 18 

A New England captain visited Schuyler’s headquarters at Lake 
George while the general was at dinner with a mixed company. 
Schuyler did not ask him to sit nor to have a glass of wine, and 
dismissed him peevishly, as if “a low and vexatious intruder.” Stung 
by his demotion, Schuyler averred that his offense lay in his aversion 
to New England principles, and that he would never cease to hate 
them. 

Graydon himself, a keen Pennsylvanian, regarded many New 
England officers with contempt, and says that far from aiming at a 
dignity which would promote discipline, they tried “by humility to 
preserve the existing blessing of equality.” He sneered at a Con¬ 
necticut colonel who carried his meat home in his own hands. Only 
one regiment, Glover’s of Marblehead, seemed to him well-trained. 
Early in the war a court-martial, principally Southern, acquitted 
with alacrity a Maryland lieutenant who had shown insufficient 
respect for a Northern brigadier. John Adams, writing his friend 
Hawley in the fall of 1775, took a view of these prejudices flattering 
to his own sectional pride; it was natural, he reflected, for people 
outside New England to desire a wide gulf between privates and 
officers, since there men of sense and education were much fewer 
than in New England. But he was genuinely alarmed, nevertheless, 
declaring that “without the utmost caution on both sides, and the 
most delicate forbearance,” these feelings “will certainly be fatal.” 

When Yankee troops failed in battle, the other regiments pointed 

1T John Adams, “Works,” III, 47. Gates had become well acquainted in the camp 
at Cambridge, and was much liked. Adams notes the far-reaching consequences of 
the quarrel—it had much to do with the overturn of the Federalists in New York in 
1800. New Jersey joined in Congress with New England against Schuyler, out of 
jealousy of her larger neighbor. Livingston Mss., Duer to R. R. Livingston May 28, 
1777- , , 

18 Graydon s “Memoirs,” *27 ff.; Scharf’s “Maryland,” III, 341-42. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 55 * 


to the fact as a natural result of the leveling principles of their offi¬ 
cers. In the action in which the Americans were driven from Kip’s 
Bay to Harlem Heights, the Connecticut militia broke and ran. 
Washington, who reported the affair to Congress as “disgraceful and 
dastardly,” dismissed part of the militiamen—many had deserted— 
as worse than useless. The New England troops for a short time 
became, as Hooper of North Carolina, then in Congress, says, “a 
byword among the nations—‘Eastern prowess,’ ‘nation poorly,’ ‘camp 
difficulty,’ are standing terms of reproach and dishonor.” 19 Rumors 
and letters flooded upon Congress, John Adams says, representing 
the Yankees as “cowards running away perpetually, and the Southern 
troops as standing bravely.” In the army camps bitter feeling was 
aroused. Connecticut men, remembering Colonel Knowlton’s brave 
stand on the day after the rout, and the martyrdom of Nathan Hale, 
would not patiently hear themselves called poltroons. A brigadier- 
general wrote that “the Pennsylvania and New England troops 
would as soon fight each other” as the British, 20 and this was no 
great exaggeration. 

Stalwart John Adams had made the speech in Congress nomi¬ 
nating Washington to be commander-in-chief, thereby mortally 
offending his associate Hancock, who till the last moment hoped the 
choice would fall upon himself. 21 But he now attacked Washington, 
on the ground that in his official letters “he often mentions things 
to the disadvantage of some part of New England, but seldom any¬ 
thing of the kind about any other part of the continent.” Adams also 
noted that all three of Washington’s aides came from the south¬ 
ward, that they were egotisical young men, and that they did not 
respect either New England or Congress as they should have done. 22 
There was a fear in New England that the commander kept too 
many Southerners near him, for it was not then understood how 
little Washington allowed his aides to mould his opinions. The 
Yankees were set apart in Congress much as in the armies. At the 
first session, some of the Congressmen from the Middle and South¬ 
ern Provinces made up a separate table. When Chastellux visited 


»Jones’s “Defense of Rey. Hist. N. C.,” 321-26. Hooper accused the Yankees of 

plundering friend and foe without discrimination. r “MVmnirs an 

2° Gordon, “Hist. Ind.,” II, 127 (N Y ed„ 1789); Mrs. Grants .Memoirs of an 
American Lady,” Ch. XX; S. G. Fisher, “Struggle for Amer. Ind., I, 519, Reed, 

^1 Adams * “Works,” II, 417-18. Adams was in part prompted by the fact that 
there was ’“a Southern party against a Northern, and a jealousy against a New 
England army under the command of a New England general. 

22 “Works,” III, 87; I, 255-56. 


552 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Philadelphia in 1780, he found the New England delegates dining 
apart from the others, and took a meal with them. 

Virginia and New England had much to applaud in each other 
in 1775-76, when they were together leading the rest of the nation 
to independence. They had every reason afterward to increase their 
mutual esteem. Yet how persistent were their sectional jealousies 
was shown by two incidents just before the Constitution was adopted. 
In Connecticut, during a debate on the judiciary early in 1787, Col. 
Wadsworth offered the practise of the Southern States in support of 
his argument. At once there was a stir. A Mr. Hopkins arose and 
warmly rebuked him for daring to mention these States, which 
“retain their former ideas of kingly government and partake too 
much of despotism.” 23 In Virginia, R. H. Lee was often accused of 
partiality for New England. One such charge was made in 1777, 
and was indignantly and eloquently answered. 24 It was repeated 
after the peace, when the navigation of the Mississippi was an 
anxious question, for Lee inclined toward the Northern point of 
view. But these charges came to a climax in 1788, when in the 
Virginia Convention Patrick Henry rebuked Lee for his record. 
Lee replied indignantly, and James Innes spoke even more forcibly. 
“I observe, with regret,” he said, “that there is a general spirit of 
jealousy with respect to our northern brethren. . . . We are told 
that the New Englanders mean to take our trade from us, and make 
us hewers of wood and carriers of water; and, the next moment, that 
they will emancipate our slaves!” 25 
As the final unfavorable factor of a general nature, there were the 
prevailing political ideas of the time. Upon this subject of exten¬ 
sive national unions, all European thought was bounded by a narrow 
horizon. Free institutions were thought to have operated success¬ 
fully only in small countries. There were no single great republican 
states, and except for Rome there never had been any, while Rome’s 
expansion had been accompanied by the death of republicanism. 
There were no great or successful republican confederacies. When 
Madison outlined for his own use a set of notes on “Ancient and 
Modem Confederacies,” on which he later based three essays of 

23 Conn. Magazine, June 7, 1787. 

24 Randall’s “Jefferson,” I, 210-11; Henry, “Henry,” III, 75; I, 530. Feeling in 
Congress was much as in the armies. Adams writes (“Works,” I, 175-76): “When 
we first came together, I found a strong jealousy of us from New England.” See 
also his reference (III, 44 ff., 65) to the “anti-New England spirit which haunted 
Congress in the second session. 

28 See Henry Lee’s words, H. B. Grigsby, “Va. Conv. of 1788,” I, 160 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 553 

the Federalist (18 to 20 inclusive), he could make use only of the 
remote and unimpressive examples of the Achaean and Lycian 
Leagues of Greek history; of the “Germanic Empire,” loose, awk¬ 
ward, and so poorly functioning that it repelled rather than at¬ 
tracted; and of the Swiss Confederacy and the United Netherlands, 
neither really successful as a federation. 

The only well-known writer who had spoken in praise of the 
plan of confederating separate states was Montesquieu, and he only 
in a few short paragraphs and the most general terms; eulogizing, 
as Hamilton pointed out in the ninth essay of the Federalist, the 
confederated republic as a means of uniting the external advantages 
of large monarchies with the internal advantages of small republics. 
Any attempt to place large populations under a republican sover¬ 
eignty was generally distrusted by political theorists, partly because 
no one really understood at that time the principle of indirect repre¬ 
sentation as it has since been applied. Lord Karnes in his “Sketches” 
(1774) predicted the ultimate independence of the Colonies, and 
their choice of republican forms of government, based on their 
provincial systems. The Swiss cantons united, he said, for protec¬ 
tion against the House of Austria; the Dutch states for protection 
against the King of Spain. “But our Colonies will never join in 
such a union; because they have no potent neighbor, and because 
they have an aversion to each other.” 26 

Moreover, as the State governments took form, their functions 
seemed to many Americans to include all the really important powers 
affecting individuals and local communities. To the unthinking in 
especial there appeared so little need for a broad Federal sovereignty 
that its possible nature and powers, its potential usefulness, were 
neither studied nor comprehended. Communication between different 
sections was intolerably slow, Europe was in another world, and the 
political outlook was naturally a limited one. 

Yet all three of the general obstacles to union, forbidding as they 
seemed, were easily pushed aside. The memory of old provincial 
quarrels was short-lived. It mattered naught to North Carolinians 
after the terror of Camden and the exultation of King’s Mountain 
that their fathers had quarreled with South Carolina over the slice 
of territory that Governor Martin insisted upon handing over to the 

28 This was a familiar prophecy, often quoted—see Md. Journal, October 17, 1783, 
and Conn. Magazine, March 22, 1787. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


554 

latter Province. It mattered nothing to the Middle and New Eng¬ 
land Colonies after Saratoga that in the French and Indian War they 
had sometimes pursued different objects. The narrow Quakers who 
tried publicly to rebuke Cushing and Adams in Philadelphia for the 
supposed ill-treatment of the Friends in Massachusetts were early 
thrown out of power in Pennsylvania. As for the hostility of cur¬ 
rent political ideas to Continental union, the colonists were little 
swayed by political theorizing, and that part of the population most 
opposed to a strong union would in any event have been the last 
part to use legalistic and philosophical arguments. Everyone ad¬ 
mitted that some form of political connection was needed, and the 
sole question was what the form should be. During the years 
1781-87 the people were learning by hard experience that the State 
governments would not suffice for their needs. 

The sectional animosities were not easily uprooted. But it is clear 
that among the troops the chief manifestations of them were ended 
by 1777. “Who, that was not a witness,” asked Washington in bid¬ 
ding farewell to the army, “could imagine, that the most violent local 
prejudices would cease so soon; and that men, who came from dif¬ 
ferent parts of the continent, strongly disposed by the habits of edu¬ 
cation to despise and quarrel with one another, would instantly 
become but one patriotic band of brothers?” 27 Prejudice is the 
creature of ignorance, and a much stronger antipathy than that be¬ 
tween Northerner and Southerner, the antipathy between the 
French and the Anglo-Saxon was soon conquered by association. 
The esteem of the North for Washington, and of the South for 
Greene, was symbolic in 1781 of the esteem each section had gained 
for the private soldiers of the other. The comradeship of men from 
different sections was cemented by a considerable amount of inter¬ 
state settlement after the war. Veterans who had marked an attrac¬ 
tive locality in their campaigns returned to it, while marriages fol¬ 
lowed the quartering of every detachment in settled communities. 
The army officers tried to keep alive their acquaintanceship through 
the Society of the Cincinnati. 

A similar cordiality was fostered among the political leaders of the 
States as they mingled in Congress. It is hard now to realize how 
little the principal men of one Colony knew of those of another in 
1774. Boston and New York were only four days’ journey apart; 

v Washington’s “Works,” X, 330 ff. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 555 

yet when John Adams passed through the latter town to Congress, 
he learned for the first time the exact constitution of parties there, 
identified the various political captains, and shook hands with those 
of his own views. Adams had never met Roger Sherman nor Silas 
Deane, and had never heard of Charles Carroll of Carrollton or of 
the Tilghmans till they were introduced to him in Philadelphia. It 
is clear from his diary and from the letters of other members of 
Congress that in their social hours at the first two sessions the dele¬ 
gates spent much time discussing differences of government in the 
various Colonies, and that many of them were profoundly ignorant 
of the polity of distant Provinces. 28 

II. Specific Causes of State Friction 

The particular, as distinguished from the general, causes of State 
division, were numerous. “Broils among the States,” wrote Jeffer¬ 
son, “may happen in the following ways: First, a State may be 
embroiled with the other twelve by not complying with the lawful 
requisitions of Congress. Second, two States may differ about their 
boundaries. But the method of settling these is fixed by the Con¬ 
federation [the Articles of Confederation], and most of the States 
which have any differences of this kind are submitting them to this 
mode of determination. . . . Third, other contestations may arise 
between two States, such as pecuniary demands, affrays between 
their citizens, and whatever else may arrive between two nations.” 29 
He did not mention quarrels over commerce and commercial 
restrictions; over questions of currency; over comparative military 
and financial burdens; over the western lands; or over foreign rela¬ 
tions. There was indeed no end of pretexts which State pettiness 
might seize upon as an excuse for wrangling. And pettiness was 
met everywhere; Washington in 1784, writing Gov. Harrison of 
Virginia, named the “unreasonable jealousy” the States showed of 
each other as one of the causes which threatened “our downfall as a 
nation.” 

Disputes over trade were the most constant and discreditable of 
all. It was from one such dispute that there grew the meeting of 

«Adams “Works,” II, 423. Adams, meeting Bulloch of Georgia, showed his total 
ignorance of that Colony by asking whether it had a Charter with many other ques¬ 
tions. The hottest personal quarrels in Congress, as that between Dickinson and 
Adams, had no sectional implications. 

29 “Writings,” Ford Edition, IV, 146-47* 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


556 

commissioners in the Annapolis Convention, the forerunner of the 
Constitutional Convention. Three years earlier the commercial 
wrangling had resulted in an effort, led by Massachusetts, to bring 
about the comprehensive Congressional regulation of trade. It 
divided the States among themselves, and weakened them in the 
commercial warfare it was then necessary to carry on against unfair 
foreign Powers. Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist that it had 
prevented the conclusion of helpful trade agreements with other 
lands. No nation would be foolish enough to enter into an economic 
treaty with the weak central government, conceding privileges of 
importance, when it did not know at what moment the engagements 
of the Union would be violated by its members; especially as all 
nations knew they could obtain frequent advantages in our markets 
without making returns. As for the unneighborly regulations of the 
States, Hamilton feared in the light of the past that they would 
become more and more “serious sources of animosity and discord.” 

Of this group of disputes, those hinging upon State tariffs were 
paramount in importance. The imports of the lower South were 
made largely through Charleston; of the upper South, through Balti¬ 
more and Philadelphia; of the Middle States and New England 
through Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston. The 
passage of tariffs in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and 
Massachusetts laid heavy burdens upon States to which transship¬ 
ments were made. “The king of New York levied imposts upon 
New Jersey and Connecticut,” later wrote Fisher Ames, “and the 
nobles of Virginia bore with impatience their tributary dependence 
upon Baltimore and Philadelphia. Our discontents were fermenting 
into civil war.” Three general phases may be traced in the history 
of State imposts. During the Revolution Virginia alone levied duties 
upon a broad scale. In the first three years after the cessation of 
hostilities, all the States save New Jersey placed duties upon im¬ 
ports, but for revenue only, and not for protection. By 1785, New 
England and most of the Middle States had developed promising 
home industries, and sought to protect them by raising tariff walls 
against foreign imports. The Southern States had no such indus¬ 
tries, and depended in many ways upon imported wares; so that 
except for Virginia, they abstained from making their tariffs pro¬ 
tective. When the States had passed from the second to the third 
of these phases, the feeling between some of them became bitter, 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 557 

and at times almost savage. As rates were elevated and self-interest 
was openly avowed as the motive, it grew plain that certain States 
cared nothing how they injured their neighbors so long as they pro¬ 
tected themselves. 

The reasons why imposts were little known during the years of 
warfare are obvious. There was virtually no trade with England 
or her possessions, and much less than usual with other lands. In 
the years 1776-1779 inclusive, 570 American vessels were captured 
by the British. Moreover, the colonists felt they were fighting for 
economic as well as political freedom, and wished to set up nothing 
analogous to the hateful British restrictions upon trade. Till the 
close of the Revolution, their sentiment was for full freedom of com¬ 
mercial intercourse, and the free trade doctrines of Adam Smith and 
certain French economists were received with marked favor—many 
of the leaders, including Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams, sub¬ 
scribed to the principles of Adam Smith. Virginia alone was in a 
position to tax commerce with advantage during the five years of 
war, and alone did so. She maintained a considerable exportation of 
tobacco, and with the resulting revenue drove a brisk import trade 
in liquor and other commodities. The opportunity to fill her treas¬ 
ury with a tariff was too good to be lost. Her neighbor Maryland 
began to resort to import duties after 1779. 

With the energetic revival of foreign trade after the treaty of peace, 
there began the period of tariff for revenue only. The States had 
enjoyed a fair internal prosperity throughout the war, and were in 
better economic condition than would have been thought possible 
at its beginning. The merchant class was filled with the optimism 
and exuberant enterprise that usually come in the wake of a long 
and successful conflict; it longed for an opportunity to exert its 
unexercised strength, and was eager in buying. The States a few 
years later rang with the charge that an unwonted trade in “luxuries” 
was debilitating the nation. Meanwhile, home industries expanded 
with the same confidence. The people had a relatively large supply 
of hard money when the struggle ended, for they had received a 
great deal of specie which England had shipped for the supply of 
her forces; and this helped make British shippers eager for the 
American trade. The desire to restrict commerce as little as pos¬ 
sible was still strong in the United States. “Why,” asked Patrick 
Henry as the war closed, “why should we fetter commerce? Fetter 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


558 

not commerce, sir; let her be as free as the air—she will range the 
whole creation, and return on the wings of the four winds of heaven 
to bless the land with. plenty.” Generally speaking, till 1785 the 
States imposed duties only to lighten taxes; New Jersey and Dela¬ 
ware imposed virtually none for any purpose. 

It soon became evident, however, that the infant industries of the 
States were in no position to withstand European competition. 
Moreover, since these importations deprived the country of its ready 
specie, and Congress had no authority to provide a substitute by 
establishing a uniform, well-based coinage, the money-stringency 
became distressing. When the States sought to relieve the depres¬ 
sion which followed by issuing, in 1785-87, great quantities of paper 
money, home industry began to suffer from the rapid fall of prices 
in coin. Merchants who had bought goods too freely upon credit 
became unable to pay their debts abroad, and went into bankruptcy. 
One result of all this was to reduce State revenues rapidly at just 
the time when State needs, under the pressure of Revolutionary 
debts and rising administrative expenses, were greater than ever; 
and leaders turned to higher duties to fill the deficiency. They saw 
at the same time that the increased duties would bolster home indus¬ 
try against foreign goods, and would check the pernicious flow of 
coin to foreign lands. A further reason for resorting to protective 
duties of a markedly higher rate lay in the fact that it had become 
desirable to retaliate against European commercial restrictions. 

Hence the four New England States, New York, and Pennsylvania, 
or almost the whole northern half of the Confederation, by 1786 de¬ 
cided upon markedly increasing their duties to make them protective. 
In 1782 Massachusetts, for example, had laid duties upon only a 
small number of imports, the rate never exceeding 5 per cent. In 
1784, when the policy began to alter, the ad valorem rates on several 
articles were made 7.5 per cent., and on others, including vehicles, 
leather goods, and plated ware, 12.5 per cent. In 1785 a new tariff 
law gave still more prominence to protection by increasing the specific 
duties, and by making the ad valorem rates on some articles as high 
as 25 per cent. In 1786 another step was taken in a law which 
forbade any importation whatever of 58 articles. Some of these the 
legislators deemed luxuries which the people should not have; some 
were articles which could be manufactured at home. The laws of 
1785-86 were avowedly, to quote the preamble to the former, a to 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 559 


encourage agriculture, the improvement of raw materials and manu¬ 
factures, a spirit of industry, frugality, and economy, and at the 
same time to discourage luxury and extravagance of every kind.” 
Pennsylvania turned to a full protective tariff in 1785, with the pass¬ 
age of an act “to encourage and protect the manufactures of this 
State by laying additional duties on certain manufactures which 
interfere with them.” Many articles were subjected to a specific 
duty, an ad valorem rate of 19 per cent, was levied on others, and 
special protection was offered makers of refined iron, shipbuilders, 
and joiners. This act was the model followed in part by Congress 
in framing the first Federal tariff act, that of 1789. 30 

Of the States south of New York and Pennsylvania, Virginia alone 
levied duties of a really protective character. New Jersey and 
Delaware dispensed with duties of any kind. Virginia’s protective 
duties were moderate, and laid on a short list of articles, including 
salt, hemp, cordage, cheese, snuff, and some liquors. 31 Maryland 
and the other Southern States had few industries to be aided by 
tariffs, they profited by a large export trade, and they wished the 
returning imports to be low-priced. All the import duties imposed 
by the various States applied to interstate commerce just as to for¬ 
eign commerce, unless specific provision were made to the contrary. 
The levy of export duties was confined to three of the Southern 
States, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. In early colonial times 
they had been commoner, but the desirability of encouraging foreign 
commerce had by 1765 led to their abolition almost everywhere. 
Virginia confined her duty to tobacco; Georgia contented herself 
with one on raw hides; and Maryland at one time or another taxed 
the export of tobacco, wheat, flour, and pig-iron. In these export 
duties there was little to cause ill-feeling among the States; and 
the same may be said of the tonnage taxes which some States levied, 
both to help pay for lighthouses, buoys, and other aids to naviga¬ 
tion, and to assist American shipping by discriminations against 
foreign vessels. 

It was in the smaller States of the North that resentment against 


so The friction between Massachusetts and New Hampshire at times was marked. 
In 1777 they adopted reciprocally unfriendly laws. Massachusetts prohibited the 
export of rum, molasses, textiles, leather, etc., and the New Hampshire Legislature, 
declaring that this “prohibition will be very detrimental to this State, u«J ess a 
similar measure is passed here,” retaliated. N. H. Hist. Soc. Colls., VII, 80, 
Weeden, “Ec. Hist. N. Eng.,” II, 783; A. S. Batchellor, “Brief View of the Adoption 
of the Const of the U. S.,” 16 ff. , . . 

S1 'ln 1786 Virginia punished evasions of the duty with excessive seventy. lor 
Northern comment, see N. Y. Packet, March 2, 1786. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


560 

the tariff exactions of selfish neighbors was greatest. New York’s 
duties came to be regarded with indignation by all the surrounding 
commonwealths. An impartial observer, Dr. Hugh Williamson, 
declared in 1788 that “half the goods consumed in Connecticut, or 
rather three-fourths of them; the goods consumed in New Jer¬ 
sey, or three-fourths of them; all the goods consumed in Vermont, 
and no small part of those consumed in the western part of Massa¬ 
chusetts, are bought in New York, and pay an impost of five per 
cent, for the use of this State.” 32 Some of these estimates were 
exaggerated, but the truth was grave enough. Oliver Ellsworth said 
in the same year that it was incontrovertible that Connecticut an¬ 
nually paid more than $50,000 into New York’s treasury. A recent 
historian has computed that one-third the Empire State’s expenses 
were defrayed by this indirect tribute from the land of steady 
habits. 33 

In New Jersey “Candidus” professed in 1784 a serious fear that 
the people “will have to divide ourselves between the two great 
States that overshadow us with their present consequence, and will 
finally eclipse every ray of significance by their future splendor.” 
But Jerseymen disliked New York more than Pennsylvania. Im¬ 
mediately after the conclusion of peace the inhabitants turned to the 
possibility of making their own great seaports, and on Oct. 1, 1784, 
enacted that Perth Amboy and Burlington should be free ports for 
twenty-five years. 34 All foreigners, whether mariners, manufactur¬ 
ers, or mechanics, who settled in these towns and for one month 
plied their usual calling, were then to become freemen and citizens. 
All goods, except slaves, could be imported without payment of 
State duties, unless an evident public necessity should sometime dic¬ 
tate the passage of a State tariff act upon goods which were discour¬ 
aging home manufactures. Merchants, moreover, were to be exempt 
from taxes upon their stock or ships. While the Articles of Confed¬ 
eration were still unaccepted, in 1778, New Jersey had complained 
emphatically that they left the regulation of trade to the several 
States, and that justice and harmony both demanded that Congress 

82 McRee’s “Iredell,” II, 227. 

83 Johnston’s “Connecticut,” 316. “When we see the landholder and merchant 
seduced with a false idea that their real interests are different, it is not to be 
wondered at (though it must be lamented) that one State should suppose it can 
derive advantage or may escape danger, from circumstances of injury or oppression 
to another.”—Appeal of a New York committee in behalf of the impost amendment, 
September 30, 1785; N. Y. Packet, November 10, 1785. 

s * Pa. Packet, June 5, 1783. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 561 

have this function. After the peace she protested to Congress against 
New York’s duties. In 1785 New York, which laid certain discrim¬ 
inating duties against British-shipped goods, passed an act by which 
foreign goods brought into her limits from neighboring States were 
to pay these duties, unless the owner could clearly prove that they 
had not come to America in a British vessel, and of course it was 
hard to furnish such proof. Late in the year New Jersey decided 
to take more vigorous action in defence of her rights. 

The national government had asked for about $165,000 as New 
Jersey’s share of an annual Continental quota of three millions, and 
on Oct. 20, 1785, the Legislature voted that it would pay none of 
this requisition until all the States had accepted the impost plan. 
In support of its stand the State offered various arguments; but the 
chief were that the quota was excessive, and that New Jersey could 
not support a Congress which had proved unable or unwilling to 
remedy the commercial grievances she had against New York. The 
first objection was baseless, and Congress treated the second as 
irrelevant. It held that it was the business of New Jersey, not of 
the Confederation, to deal with New York in this particular, and 
that New Jersey should try to help herself by retaliatory measures, 
not by breaking up the Union. A Congressional committee ap¬ 
peared before the Legislature at Trenton in March, 1786. Pinckney, 
its spokesman, pointed out that New Jersey’s action was making it 
impossible for the States to present a bold front to the Indians, then 
threatening frontier wars, and to the Europeans and Moors, then 
restricting American commerce. So far as New Jersey hoped to 
injure New York by this course, he added, her policy was mis¬ 
taken; for it would only turn the animosity of other States from 
Clinton, and direct it against her. On the very day that he spoke, 
the Legislature rescinded its resolution. 35 

One pin-prick by New York was especially irritating to her neigh¬ 
bors. In the spring of 1787 the Legislature, not content with in¬ 
creasing the duties on foreign goods, extended the entrance and 
clearance fees to all vessels bound from or to Connecticut and New 
Jersey. For vessels under twenty tons burden, the fee was two 
shillings if they carried American goods, and eight shillings if they 
had any dutiable goods. This threw into the State treasury a share 
of the profits of the many boatmen who plied down the Sound and 

"Lee’s “New Jersey,” II, 373; Bancroft, “Hist, of Const.,” one-volume ed.. 187. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


562 

from eastern New Jersey with firewood and foodstuffs, while it was 
troublesome as well as expensive for every shallop and sailboat to 
clear at the customhouse just as if it had been a full-sized English or 
French ship. The New Jersey Legislature took the only retaliatory 
action possible. The city of New York had purchased four acres at 
Sandy Hook for the purpose of “maintaining a lighthouse, public inn, 
and a kitchen garden thereon,” and the Assembly promptly taxed the 
lighthouse £30 a month. 36 The Connecticut Legislature did nothing; 
but the merchants of New London signed a paper which pledged 
each to forfeit £50 if within the year he sent any goods whatever 
into the State of New York. 

Delaware followed the example of New Jersey in an effort to 
escape the exactions of Pennsylvania—she passed an act making 
Wilmington and Newcastle free ports. 37 Not only this, but she 
exempted merchants in these cities from taxes on their stock in trade, 
and from all duties on either imports or exports for a quarter cen¬ 
tury. This struck a correspondent of the chief commercial news¬ 
paper of Pennsylvania, the Packet, with alarm. 38 We import and 
export for all Delaware, he wrote, as if it were a part of our State. 
But if we do not cease to tax Delaware’s trade, this defensive meas¬ 
ure will certainly attract foreign vessels to their two ports, and make 
them vigorous rivals to Philadelphia. The harvest of the Quaker 
City was reaped far southward. Madison estimated in 1783 that 
Philadelphia and Baltimore merchants made not less than thirty or 
forty per cent, on Virginia’s imports and exports, and that the profits 
were “a tribute which, if paid into the treasury of this State, would 
yield a surplus above all its wants,” his estimate of these profits being 
arrived at by a comparison of European and Virginian prices. From 
his convictions upon this subject sprang his bill to restrict imports 
and exports by foreign vessels to Norfolk and Alexandria. 

Even the low tariffs of South Carolina were felt to be burden¬ 
some by her neighbors. The year after the formal conclusion of 
peace Hugh Williamson drew a melancholy picture of the sufferings 
of North Carolina between two richer and more commercial States. 
Virginia and South Carolina, he predicted, would impose tariffs of 

36 Pa .Packet, July 19, 1787. 

37 It is clear that these laws for free ports, like Connecticut’s laws to encourage 
direct importation from abroad conflicted with the efforts then being made to arrange 
for State cooperation in retaliation against Great Britain. Madison lamented this in 
a letter to Jefferson, March, 1786, “Works,” II, 22 7 ff. 

38 March 6, 1786. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 563 

considerable weight. North Carolina might do the same, but what 
would be the result? Nearly half the goods that North Carolinians 
used were imported by land from the neighboring States, and as the 
sea-trade was carried on principally by small coasters, nearly half 
the remainder could be smuggled through the numerous inlets. The 
goods coming by land would pay a tariff of five per cent, or more 
for the benefit of the treasuries at Richmond and Charleston, but 
they would hardly pay a tenth of that to North Carolina, for it 
would be impossible to guard two boundaries of 150 miles each. 
Goods brought by water would in general pay a duty in some North¬ 
ern State from which they were transshipped, but the smugglers 
would see to it that any wares on which the North Carolina tariff 
was high paid no second duty. 39 Georgia so resented the indirect 
toll levied upon her by the South Carolinians that, in 1785, pressure 
was brought to bear upon the Legislature to induce it to tax all 
goods imported into the upper part of the State from across the 
border. Returns for 1784 showed that the region around Augusta 
had imported goods worth £35,000 sterling, and some legislators 
thought it would be proper to injure the Carolina merchants by 
discriminating in favor of the direct trade to Savannah, for they 
believed that Charleston was bleeding them. 40 

Thus in all sections of the republic was borne out the prediction 
made by the Pennsylvania Legislature in December, 1783, that “the 
local exercise within the States of the power of regulating and con¬ 
trolling trade can result only in discordant systems productive of 
internal jealousies and competitions, and illy calculated to oppose or 
counteract foreign measures, which are the effect of a unity of 
councils.” 41 The last part of this prediction points to another type 
of commercial dissension—dissensions over retaliatory measures 
against Europe. After the conclusion of peace Spain closed many 
of her ports to our vessels. France in 1783 for the most part ex¬ 
cluded American ships from her West Indian possessions, and though 
in 1784 she adopted a more liberal policy, still refused them many 
privileges. Great Britain admitted non-manufactured goods from 

*» N. C. State Records, XVII, 94-105. North Carolina had another grievance against 
Virginia, relating to the trade with the Indians. Colonel A. Campbell wrote of North 
Carolina, July 10, 1782: “I observe a jealousy of Virginia in assuming the whole 
agency with the Indians, and a monopoly of the trade. Perhaps this is such a national 
concern that it may be best accommodated by regulations of commerce. For I doubt 
whether Carolina would be competent to the task were it relinquished in their favor. 
Cal. Va. State Papers, III, 213. 

40 Pa. Packet. March 12, 1785. 

« Bancroft, '‘Hist. Const.,” two-volume ed., I, 334 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


564 

America to British ports free of duty, even in American bottoms, 
but she closed her West Indian islands absolutely against the United 
States, save that American lumber and breadstuffs could be entered 
in British vessels. 

No foreign government perceived better than London the advan¬ 
tages it could gain from the commercial autonomy of the States. 
In 1786 it was planning to send consuls to the principal commercial 
centres, to have them approach the various States with offers of trade 
agreements, and thus avoid all need of negotiating with the national 
government. 42 The most striking conflict over retaliation was that 
between Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1785. While Congress 
was pleading for the grant of power to regulate all American trade, 
Connecticut passed a law which gave foreign merchants and manu¬ 
facturers an advantage over Americans of the adjoining States. Gov¬ 
ernor Bowdoin, at the request of the Legislature, protested, declar¬ 
ing that this act was “the more exceptionable, inasmuch as for the 
sake of cementing the Union, which is the true policy of the con¬ 
federated commonwealth, our laws exact no duties on the manufac¬ 
tures of the United States, and in regard to commerce, their citizens 
respectively stand upon a footing with our own.” 43 Both Massa¬ 
chusetts and New Hampshire thereupon enacted commercial laws in 
direct retaliation against British trade restrictions, and Bow¬ 
doin sent a circular letter to all the Governors, appealing for sup¬ 
port and urging their concurrence in vesting Congress with the 
powers it desired. 44 

But all other commercial disputes faded into insignificance beside 
that over the maintenance of American claims to the navigation of 
the Mississippi. These claims brought the United States into con¬ 
flict with Spain, and in two different ways at two different times 
such a clash was extremely undesirable. The question first gamed 
prominence two years before the Revolution ended. Virginia, by 
her charter and her conquests under Clark, claimed the Illinois and 
Kentucky country reaching to the banks of the Mississippi, and in 
November, 1779, her Legislature instructed her delegates in Con¬ 
gress to press for the free navigation of the river to the sea. Other 

C° rr *. of the U. S., 1783-89, Ed. 1837, II, 180 ff., shows us John Adams’s 
mingled vexation and amusement, while in London, over the “idea of thirteen pleni¬ 
potentiaries meeting together in a congress at every court in Europe, each with a 
full power and distinct instructions from his State.” 

48 Hamilton, “Hist, of the Republic,” III, 136-37. 

44 See Adams’ commendation of these laws, Dip. Corr. of the U. S., 1783-89, I, 176. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 565 

Southern States supported this demand. Congress at this time was 
holding out to Spain the prospect that if it entered into an American 
alliance it would be able to regain the Floridas from England, yet 
it agreed unanimously that any alliance must be conditional upon 
“the free navigation of the river Mississippi into and from the sea.” 
Jay, our envoy to Spain, thereupon reported from Madrid that such 
a condition was fatal to the chances of an alliance. Though Con¬ 
gress was at first immovable, and sent Jay instructions to argue 
stubbornly with the Spanish Government, the dark months of 1780, 
when the whole South was being overrun, the Armed Neutrality under 
Catherine of Russia was threatening to press for peace, and the 
French Government was frankly worried as to the outcome of the 
struggle, shook its determination. A demand arose within and 
without Congress for a conclusion of the Spanish alliance at all 
costs. The Georgia and South Carolina delegates united in the 
closing days of 1780 in moving a reconsideration of the instructions 
to Jay, and one of Virginia’s two members, Theodoric Bland, came 
over to their side. Congress rescinded its instructions Jan. 2, 1781. 
However, Jay decided not to alter his attitude, no alliance was 
formed, and Cornwallis’s surrender shelved the question. 

But after the conclusion of peace the commercial interests of 
America wanted a treaty of commerce with Spain. Gardoqui ar¬ 
rived as Spanish Minister in 1785, and Jay, who was now Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs, was directed by Congress to negotiate an agree¬ 
ment with him. His instructions, like those of five years previous, 
were explicit in demanding the opening of the Mississippi; while 
Gardoqui, like the Madrid Government in 1780, emphatically de¬ 
clared that the river would be closed to American vessels. Once 
more it seemed to many Americans that the only escape from the 
predicament was for the South temporarily to yield. Jay thought 
so. His negotiations with Gardoqui took as their starting point the 
possibility that the United States would consent to the closing of 
the river for twenty-five years or slightly longer, and in August, 
1786, he laid a plan of this character before Congress. 

This proposal to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi for 
almost a generation in return for commercial privileges proved a 
great wedge between the northern and southern States. Most of the 
northern delegates in Congress heartily approved Jay’s course. To 
their merchants, shippers, and farmers it was highly important that 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


566 

the Spanish ports receive our export trade, so that our raw materials 
might be exchanged for Spanish coin and European manufactures. 
They believed that trade with Spain might largely take the place 
occupied in the political economy of the Colonies by commerce with 
Great Britain; for there was not an American product that Spain did 
not want. A commercial treaty with such a Power would increase 
American prestige all over Europe, making us friends wherever its 
news penetrated. Moreover, they said, the right of navigating a 
river a thousand miles to the west, surrounded by vast tracts of 
wilderness, with only scattered and feeble American settlements in 
the country it drained, need surely not be insisted upon for two or 
three decades to come. But to the South and Southwest this attitude 
was a piece of monstrous sectional selfishness. These two sections 
viewed the Mississippi as the key to the possession of a great em¬ 
pire, while they argued that upon its navigation already hung valu¬ 
able economic interests, which were increasing as with every year 
a new wave of migration rolled over the Appalachians, The day 
was coming when the sons of the South would carve out of the 
Southwest a territory richer and more flourishing than the whole 
United States as it existed in 1785. A free access to the ocean was 
indispensable to this territory, and if its future population could 
obtain it in no other way, it would break from the United States 
and perhaps even go over to Spain. 

Jay reported his plan for the Spanish treaty in August, 1786; the 
Northern majority in Congress prepared a motion for the repeal of 
the old instructions limiting his powers of negotiation; and this re¬ 
peal was carried by a vote of seven Northern against five Southern 
States. Intense anger was at once manifested in Virginia and the 
Ohio Valley. Some Southern statesmen attributed to the North the 
most despicable motives. The Yankee object, wrote Monroe to 
Governor Henry, “is to break up the settlements on the western 
waters ... so as to throw the weight of population eastward and 
keep it there to appreciate the vacant lands in New York and Massa¬ 
chusetts.” He cast equally bitter reflections upon individual mem¬ 
bers of Congress. King, he commented, had married a rich New 
York lady, “so that if he secures a market for fish and turns the com¬ 
merce of the western country down this river [the Hudson], he at¬ 
tains his objects.” He was convinced that Jay was dishonest. 

An observer wrote from Louisville in December that the people 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 567 

on the western waters were absolutely thunderstruck when they heard 
of the treaty-plan. What, they cried, should they be sold as vassals 
to the cruel Spaniards? Should they be their bondsmen, as the 
Israelites were to the Egyptians? The Parliamentary tyranny that 
had caused the Revolution was less impudent and intolerable than 
this. They were already making preparations to assert their rights 
against the Spanish at New Orleans and Natchez; and if Congress 
did not support them, they would throw off their allegiance to the 
United States, and apply to some other Power, preferably Great 
Britain, to receive and sustain them. 45 Ominous rumblings came 
from western Pennsylvania. The brilliant young H. H. Bracken- 
ridge of that section ran for the Legislature in October on a plat¬ 
form demanding Pennsylvania’s opposition to the suggested treaty. 46 

Would Jay proceed with the treaty, knowing that his support lay 
with one section, and that it was doubtful if public sentiment in two 
or three states of that section supported the course he was taking? 
Monroe in deep excitement wrote Madison that he believed Jay 
would hesitate until he had obtained a knowledge of the feeling of 
the real leaders of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but that the Sec¬ 
retary was too far committed to mark time long. “I consider the 
party, especially Jay and the principal advocates, as having gone 
too far to retreat. They must either carry the measure or be dis¬ 
graced . . . and sooner than suffer this they will labor to break the 
Union.” Indeed, pursued Monroe, he had strong reason to believe 
that they were already intriguing with Northern leaders to split the 
nation. “They have even sought a dismemberment to the Potomac, 
and those of the party here have been sounding those in office thus 
far.” 47 Monroe counselled secret measures to obtain the adhesion 
of Pennsylvania and Maryland to the South, in the event that a na¬ 
tional division really occurred. Pennsylvania was especially impor¬ 
tant—“if a dismemberment takes place that State must not be added 
to the eastern scale.” When such words could be written, the situa¬ 
tion had plainly become serious. 

But this dark cloud rolled swiftly away. Jay had no desire to 

45 Published in the Pa. Packet, July 7, 1787. The writer vividly describes the 
Spanish abuses at New Orleans. “Large quantities of flour, meat, etc., have been 
taken there the summer past, and mostly confiscated. Those who had permits from 
their Governor were obliged to sell at a price he was pleased to state, or subject 
themselves to lose the whole. Men of large property are already ruined by their 
policy.” 

48 Pa. Packet, October 7, 1786. 

47 Monroe’s “Writings,” I, 160 ff. (September 3, 1786); Rives, “Madison,” II, 
Ch. 24. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


568 

injure the South, and he was the last man in the United States to 
consent to a breaking up of the Union. If he was diligent in drafting 
a treaty with Gardoqui which consented to the closing of the Mis¬ 
sissippi, it was because he sincerely believed that unless the United 
States yielded to Spain, war could not long be averted. The clashes 
already occurring in the West between the settlers and the Spaniards 
had given him great anxiety. However, as events showed, there 
really was no imminent danger of a Spanish war, and a majority 
of Congressmen never believed that there was. It was easier for the 
North to yield than the South, and during 1787 it began to do so. 
The Pennsylvania Legislature elected in the fall of 1786 was a body 
which realized that part of the State lay in the Mississippi Valley, 
and it gave its new Congressional delegation positive instructions to 
oppose the treaty, while Rhode Island also came over to the South¬ 
ern view, and New Jersey’s delegation became doubtful. When 
Madison offered a test question bearing upon the treaty, the delegates 
of five of the eight States present voted under his leadership upon 
the Southern side, and the delegates of the other three under Rufus 
King’s leadership upon the Northern side. But only two of the five 
were Southern States, and had all the Southern States had delega¬ 
tions present, their vote would have decided the issue—seven States, 
a majority of the thirteen, being requisite. The treaty was not 
adopted; and the whole question had lost much though by no means 
all of its importance when the Federal Convention met. 

III. Friction Over Commerce and Finance 

The want of a uniform currency created financial and commercial 
difficulties that were prolific of ill-feeling among citizens of the dif¬ 
ferent States. The nation had four general currency systems, each 
complicated by a score of petty local variations. The pound was 
1547 grains of fine silver in Georgia; 1289 grains in Virginia and 
New England; 1031% grains in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, 
and New Jersey; and 966^ grains in North Carolina and New York. 
The English guinea was worth about two shillings more in New 
York than in the other Middle States, while the Pennsylvania mer¬ 
chant who carried a guinea into New England found it there worth 
seven shillings less than at home. In other words, the shilling had 
values varying from one eighth of a dollar to its full sterling rate of 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 569 

about a quarter dollar. 48 Jefferson suggested the adoption of the 
Spanish silver dollar as the national unit of currency, pointing out 
that it was known in every State, was in more common use than the 
pound or shilling, and had been employed by Congress for its com¬ 
putations. This was true; but so long as the value of the dollar 
varied in different States with reference to that of the pound and 
shilling, and so long as other coins, doubloons, moidores, Carolines, 
pistoles, and ducats, played a part in trade, no end of misunder¬ 
standings arose in business intercourse. 

These difficulties were accentuated by the total unreliability of 
the paper currencies. It was hard for even well-informed citizens 
to understand what value to attach to a handful of bills, and the 
tables of exchange between States would have filled a fat volume. 
With every new legislative session, newspapers bristled with sched¬ 
ules of depreciation. The difficulty of making money transactions 
was further accentuated by the prevalence of counterfeiting and 
clipping. The counterfeiters paid their chief attention to small 
coins, as in washing coppers with silver to make them sixpences, and 
sous with gold to make them moidores; a little caution was sufficient 
guard against them. But clipping went to such lengths that at last 
all coin passed by weight and not by face value. The United States 
Government in 1782 actually had Timothy Pickering clip a quan¬ 
tity of French guineas which had come over as a loan and which 
contained an unnecessary weight of metal. If the Government paid 
them out as they were, the first takers would clip them and reap a 
snug profit; so the Treasury sent out for anvil, punches, and the 
information as to how goldsmiths put in their plugs—“a shameful 
business,” said Pickering. Unless a uniform national coinage were 
adopted and counterfeiting and clipping halted, Washington re¬ 
marked, the Irish bull about making a dollar into five quarters would 
be an everyday reality, and every man would have to travel with 
scales to weight his specie. 

Governor Livingston, of New Jersey, who lived in Elizabethtown 
and naturally did much business in New York city, found it so 
impossible to use Jersey money “at the unconscionable discount 
which your brokers and merchants exact” that he collected what 
New York money was due him and saved it to employ across the 

48 Jefferson’s “Autobiography,” Appendix F; Bancroft, “Hist. Const.,” one-volume 
ed., 167. 


570 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Hudson. 49 Jefferson kept careful account of his expenditures on 
his travels to Congress, and his memoranda disclose the vexations 
to which any traveller was subject. A man could not be sure that 
what was sound money in one county would pass when he had 
crossed an imaginary line, nor that if his bills did pass, he would 
not be charged a ruinous discount. When Georgia sold her confis¬ 
cated property, the Legislature ordered that no currency of other 
States be accepted. “This is done in order as they say,” commented 
a correspondent of Governor Caswell, of North Carolina, “to humble 
the pride of the North Carolinians, who refuse to take their money, 
but at an under rate.” 50 The richest and strongest States, little 
affected by the paper money movement, sometimes refused to have 
anything to do with the bills of weaker neighbors. Thus New Jer¬ 
sey’s last important measure for emitting paper, the law for print¬ 
ing £100,000 which Governor Livingston and his Council were not 
brave enough to veto twice, was rendered largely nugatory by the 
adjoining States. New York city and Philadelphia treated the new 
money with contempt, and it depreciated with breakneck speed. 

But the worst State disputes connected with currency arose from 
the enactment of measures impairing the obligation of contracts. 
Madison classified these measures under four heads. 51 They were 
the making of depreciated paper a legal tender for debts; the sub¬ 
stitution of property for money as a tender for debts; laws for the 
payment of debts by instalments; and the closing of the courts of 
justice. When such laws followed the flooding of a state with de¬ 
preciated paper, any man who had loaned money in that State, or 
had exchanged a commodity for a future payment of money, was 
exposed to the complete or partial loss of his loan or commodity. 
Nothing did more to bring about the adoption of the Constitution 
than the recognition by business interests that they needed a safe¬ 
guard against this invasion of justice and right. 

Rhode Island was the chief offender under the first head of Madi¬ 
son’s classification. Madison had her in mind when he spoke of 
paper money as causing “the same warfare and retaliation among 
the States” as commercial restrictions. Because of her conduct, 

49 Jay’s “Works,” III, 373-74. 

80 N. C. State Records, XIII, 68-69. 

61 “Among the numerous ills with which this practice is pregnant,” Madison wrote 
of paper money issues, “one I find is that it is producing the same warfare and 
retaliation among the States as were produced by the State regulations of commerce.” 
“Works,” II, 261-62. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 571 

Massachusetts and Connecticut, when he wrote, had passed laws 
enabling their citizens to pay all debts owed to people of a paper- 
tender State in just the same manner as the latter paid their debts 
to the citizens of Massachusetts and Connecticut. That is, Rhode 
Island creditors were virtually outlawed in the neighboring States, 
and could no more collect a note at face value than a Boston creditor 
could collect a note in full in Providence. Connecticut in 1787 
prepared a protest to Congress against the Rhode Island laws as 
violations of the Articles of Confederation. The opprobrium visited 
on the littlest State was unprecedented. No petty community of 
Greece, wrote General Knox, ever showed more turpitude than she, 
plundering the orphan and widow by her laws, 52 while the same lan¬ 
guage was used of Rhode Island by the Connecticut Magazine: 

There prowls the rascal clothed with legal power 
To snare the orphan and the poor devour; 

The crafty knave his creditor besets, 

And advertising paper, pays his debts. 

Bankrupts their creditors with rage pursue, 

No stop—no mercy from the debtor crew. 53 

Some men talked of keeping her out of the new Federal Union for 
her sins. The Rhode Island delegates in the Continental Congress 
complained of the insults to which they were exposed. We need 
not inform you, they wrote home, how it wounds our feelings “to 
hear and see the proceedings of our Legislature burlesqued and ridi¬ 
culed, and to find that Congress and all men of sober reflection 
reprobate in the strongest terms the principles which actuate our 
administration of government. ,, 53a 

The stay laws, under which debtors were allowed extensions of 
time upon their obligations—virtual moratoriums—took their most 
reprehensible form in Virginia and South Carolina. In North Caro¬ 
lina the closing of the courts to suits for debt was opposed by the 
best leaders because it meant loss to any creditor whose evidence 
was destroyed by the lapse of time. Of the laws for settling obliga¬ 
tions by the tender of land or other property, South Carolina’s “pine 
barren act” was the most famous, and injured a few citizens of other 
States. The action of some States in redeeming their paper money 
at an arbitrary scale of depreciation produced hardship for the 
holders of that paper in other States. Still another source of ill 

62 Drake, “Knox,” 99. ., _ ^ „ 

63 “The Anarchiad,” given in full in Providence Gazette, April 14, 1 7 ° 7 - 

B3a Staples, “R. I. and the Cont. Cong.,” 566. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


572 

feeling was the fact that debts for military supplies furnished from 
one State to another were in some instances, as in North Carolina, 
treated as payable in depreciated paper. 54 

Sometimes State issues of paper money had quite unforeseen results 
upon commercial relations with a neighboring State. In Pennsyl¬ 
vania the bills of credit struck off early in the Revolution depreciated 
faster at home than in Maryland, where sanguine merchants trusted 
more than the Philadelphians did in their ultimate redemption. 
Already the trade of York and Cumberland counties in Pennsylvania 
had begun to turn to Baltimore because of that city’s proximity, and 
of the enterprise of its importers; and since more could be purchased 
in Baltimore with the Pennsylvania bills, the York and Cumberland 
farmers now began trading there exclusively, a fact discussed with 
indignation in the Pennsylvania Gazette . 55 It was believed at a 
later date that jealous Baltimoreans encouraged the radical Consti¬ 
tutionalists who in Pennsylvania in 1784-85 were bent upon destroy¬ 
ing the Bank of North America; these merchants saw with envy 
the benefits the Bank afforded to Philadelphia business. But for 
their meddling, wrote one angry Philadelphian, there would be no 
opposition to the Bank except that born from narrow partisanship. 56 

A long list this of irritations over tariffs, clearance regulations, 
Spanish trade, confused currencies, and legal tender laws—a list 
that might be extended. But it is a symbolic fact that out of one 
commercial dispute, that between Maryland and Virginia, grew the 
movement for a stronger Union. The Potomac lay between these 
two States, and Virginia, which in her Constitution of 1776 ad¬ 
mitted that the southern shore was the boundary, feared that this 
admission might be interpreted as a total relinquishment of jurisdic¬ 
tion over the river, leaving Maryland free to impose whatever regu¬ 
lations she pleased on vessels plying to Virginia’s Potomac ports. 
Out of the desire for an understanding grew the Annapolis and then 
the Federal Convention. Just so, out of interstate conflicts in the 
years after 1781 came some of the strongest bonds of union. 

Before the Revolution the thirteen Colonies were so overwhelm¬ 
ingly agricultural that the interchange of their products did little 
to link them together; merchants and shippers looked with predom¬ 
inant concern upon the overseas trade. The Southern growers of 


84 Madison’s “Works,” II, 259. 

66 November 8, 1780. 

M Bolles, “Pennsylvania,” II, 232. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 573 

cotton, indigo, and tobacco found his chief market abroad, not at the 
North; the Northern Colonies imported almost all the manufactured 
articles they required. But during the Revolution the country had 
to be largely self-sufficing, and after it, European trade regulations 
encouraged Americans to do as much as possible for themselves. 
The war gave birth to foundries at Springfield, East Bridgewater, 
Easton, and elsewhere in Massachusetts, at Lancaster, Pa., at Tren¬ 
ton, and at Principio, Md. New Jersey in 1780 had over forty 
fulling mills for finishing cloth. After 1780 the industrial progress 
was remarkable. Textile mills began to rise in New England. Rhode 
Island and Pennsylvania became distinguished for their iron and 
steel manufacturing. By 1790 paper and powder, farm implements, 
vehicles, and furniture were made in quantities almost sufficient for 
the home market; and some articles, like nails, were better made in 
America than in Europe. Tench Coxe, addressing in 1787 the 
Friends of the American Manufactures in Philadelphia, spoke of the 
vast variety of goods produced at or near that city: 

Meal of all kinds, ships and boats, malt liquors, potash, gunpowder, cordage, 
loaf-sugar, pasteboard, cards and paper of every kind, books in various languages, 
snuff, tobacco, starch, cannon, muskets, anchors, nails, and very many other articles 
of iron, bricks, tiles, potter’s ware, millstones and other stonework, cabinet work, 
trunks and Windsor chairs, carriages and harness of all kinds, corn fans, ploughs 
and many other instruments of husbandry, saddlery and whips, shoes and boots, 
leather of various kinds, hosiery, hats and gloves, wearing apparel, coarse linens and 
woolens, and some cotton goods, linseed and fish oil, wares of gold, silver, tin, pewter, 
brass, and copper, clocks and watches, wool and cotton cards, printing type, glass and 
stone ware, candles, soap, and several other valuable articles. 


As the back country began to fill up, a brisk Western trade de¬ 
veloped in the exchange of these manufactured articles for raw com¬ 
modities. The Genesee, the Kentucky, the Tennessee, and the Ohio 
settlements furnished an eager market for the products of the coast. 
The Middle States drove a flourishing trade with the South in ex¬ 
changing their flour and beef, their iron, wooden, and leather manu¬ 
factures for the natural products of the warmer climate; and in this 
New England participated. A competent observer during the period 
of the Confederation says that Pennsylvania “actually became to a 
considerable extent the same resource for the furnishing trade to the 
Southern States that England had been before.” As transportation 
improved, this interstate trade swelled in volume. It slowly became 
evident that the North required the agricultural products of the 
South, and the South the manufactures of the North, the two sec- 


574 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


tions complementing one another. Business relations of all kinds 
increased, there was more travel, and the understanding of one State 
and section by another became far better than before. 

IV. Jealousy Over War Burdens 

As Jefferson suggested in saying that a State might be embroiled 
with the others for non-compliance with Congressional requisitions, 
the varying zeal of the States in their support of the union was a 
constant source of friction. A demagogue could appeal more easily 
to a State by suggesting that its yokefellows were shirking than in 
any other way. States which granted the requests of Congress for 
authority to lay impost duties and regulate trade resented the delays 
and refusals of other States. But their resentment was much stronger 
when it came to the refusal of requisitions which Congress had every 
right to make. Such refusals became familiar to the nation early 
in the Revolution. The evil, wrote Madison in 1787, had been so 
fully experienced both during the war and after it, resulted so 
naturally from the independent authority of the States, and was so 
common in other confederacies, that it might be regarded as a defect 
inherent in the existing system. 57 In 1780 the New York Assembly 
unanimously instructed its delegates in Congress to propose that 
whenever a State was deficient in furnishing money, supplies, or men, 
Congress should order Washington at once to send armed forces into 
that State, and compel it to do its part; it and Governor Clinton 
thought civil war preferable to the inanition and stubbornness some 
States were showing. 58 

Comparisons between States as to their respective military efforts 
were odious but inevitable. As one section after another was in¬ 
vaded, its citizens clamored that their sufferings were not properly 
understood, and that they were being neglected. 

As a matter of fact, each section was at times remiss in military 
activity, as Washington’s letters alone suffice to show. New England 
equipped and maintained more than half of the 231,950 regulars 
enlisted in the Continental Army; but New England militia were 
as prone as those of other sections to go home when their time ex¬ 
pired, no matter what the crisis, and Washington protested to one 

57 Madison’s “Works,” II, 361. 

® 8 Journal N. Y. Assembly, Session beginning September 7 (date, October 10), 1780. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 575 


New England State against the raising of troops for State duty 
only. Early in Burgoyne’s invasion he lamented that so few Yan¬ 
kee troops had appeared and that they had behaved so badly in the 
field. Later Washington contrasted the feebleness of Pennsylvania's 
efforts when invaded with the final vigor New England showed in 
helping crush Burgoyne. It astonished every part of the continent, 
he wrote President Wharton, that at the moment Philadelphia was 
threatened with capture, this most opulent and populous State had 
placed but 1200 militia in line against Howe. Just before he went 
into winter quarters at Valley Forge, he roundly remonstrated with 
the Pennsylvania Legislature for failing to provide the clothing and 
munitions, as well as men, it should have furnished. During the 
final stages of the war, he repeatedly complained of the South’s fail¬ 
ure to raise, drill, and equip troops as it ought. 59 In the South 
alone did indignation over supposed military neglect by other sec¬ 
tions become serious. It was loudly voiced as soon as Cornwallis 
and Tarleton entered North Carolina. On Dec. 2, 1780, the Virginia 
Legislature dispatched Speaker Benjamin Harrison to lay the des¬ 
perate situation of the South before Congress. At the same time it 
was proposed to remonstrate to Congress upon the indifference of 
that body and of the Northern States to the region, and one member 
actually drew up a violently reproachful paper. 60 

Meanwhile, in the lower South the ugliest rumors were afloat in 
the spring of 1780. “It is currently reported, and believed here,” 
President John Rutledge wrote just after the surrender of Charles¬ 
ton, “that Great Britain will offer America the independence of all 
the States except North and South Carolina and Georgia—and per¬ 
haps even of North Carolina—and that such a proposition will be 
accepted.” Aedanus Burke later said that many members of Con¬ 
gress believed that it would be necessary to make this territorial 
sacrifice, and there is the best of evidence that the possibility was 
seriously discussed. According to John Mathews, then in Con¬ 
gress for South Carolina, the French Minister earnestly suggested 
that it might be well to conclude peace on this basis, he won some 
to his side, and it was necessary for Mathews to denounce the pro¬ 
posal openly in the national legislature. 61 


See Washington, “Writings,” VI, 8 ff.; 117 ff.; Henry, “Henry,” III, 120-22. 

90 Rives, “Madison.” I, 275-80. - 

81 Upon this interesting topic see S. C. Hist, and Genealog.. Mag., October, 1916; 
McCrady’s “S. Carolina 1775-1780,” 538-43! Washingtons Writings, VIII, 438 ff.; 
Cassius’s Address to the Freemen of the State of S. C., January, 1783. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


576 

Congress felt the necessity of reassuring the South. After hearing 
Benjamin Harrison’s representations, it ordered that the Southern 
army should comprise all the regulars from Pennsylvania to Georgia 
inclusive, directed the Pennsylvania Line to join the forces in Virginia 
without loss of time, and took steps to furnish transportation and 
supplies of all kinds. Virginia’s dissatisfaction was abated, and the 
remonstrance which had been drafted was never presented. To re¬ 
assure the Carolinas and Georgia, Congress sent a circular to all the 
States on June i, 1781, calling upon them to put every ounce of 
strength into the war, and declaring that if this was done, the pros¬ 
pect was good for driving the British from the country or at least 
confining them to the coast, “in order to give as little room as possible 
to the enemy’s claim of uti possidetis: which will undoubtedly be 
most strenuously insisted on by them in the course of the negotia¬ 
tion—a claim totally inadmissible on our part.” For emphasis, 
Congress added that it would “accept of peace upon no other terms 
than the independence of the thirteen United States of America in 
all its parts.” Two of the five authors of this appeal were Southern¬ 
ers. When the Northern troops marched south to assist in the cap¬ 
ture of Cornwallis, many of the men went reluctantly. They showed 
great discontent as they passed through Philadelphia, and Washing¬ 
ton urged the Superintendent of Finance to seize the moment to 
advance them a month’s pay in specie. But their appearance in 
Virginia, coupled with the emphatic pronouncement of Congress, 
set all Southern apprehensions at rest. 62 

After peace it was easy for a State to persuade itself that it was 
carrying an undue share of the financial burden. No part of the 
Articles of Confederation was so disputed as that which provided a 
basis for the apportionment of money-requisitions. It was first 
suggested that a State’s quota be fixed according to the number of 
its inhabitants, exclusive of untaxed Indians, this being also the basis 
proposed for representation in Congress; but Virginia alone sup- 

62 See Journals Cont. Cong., XX, 585 ff.; Sparks’s “Washington,” Ch. 13. Some 
Southerners showed considerable jealousy of neighboring Southern States, and re¬ 
luctance to give them military assistance. Thus General Allen Jones, a sober man, wrote 
Governor Caswell, on October 21, 1778, that he thought North Carolina by no means 
bound to send troops to help South Carolina, and that “were the Assembly sitting, I 
am sure a single man would not march to the South. We have always been haughtily 
treated by South Carolina, till they wanted our assistance, and then we are sisters, 
but as soon as their turn is served, all relationship ceases.” N. C. State Records, 

XIII, 245-46. Hooper, the conservative, wrote in precisely the same bitter terms of 
South Carolina two months later; McRee, “Iredell,” I, 404-06. Many of the 
Virginia militia objected to marching to the aid of the Carolinas; N. C. State Records. 

XIV, 75-76. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 577 

ported this plan. The Northern States wished freemen to have 
the exclusive right of representation, and the Southern States did 
not wish negroes taxed. Finally Congress and the States agreed 
that the valuation of land and the improvements thereon should be 
the measure for taxation, though they knew that it was a faulty one. 
In the spring of 1783 a Congressional committee attempted a reform, 
recommending that the whole number of free inhabitants, and three- 
fifths all other inhabitants except untaxed Indians, be taken as the 
basis. The proposal failed by a vote in which no section was 
clearly defined. Immediately afterwards, Hamilton suggested a new 
basis—the whole number of free inhabitants, including white per¬ 
sons bound to labor for a term of years, and three-fifths of all 
others except untaxed Indians, a census to be taken triennially; 
and his motion prevailed by a vote of all the states except Massa¬ 
chusetts and Rhode Island. 

Massachusetts vehemently objected to the Congressional requisi¬ 
tion of February, 1780, for specific supplies from all the States. 
Gerry offered its protest at Philadelphia; the commonwealth, he 
said, had contributed freely of its resources, but now it was tired 
of the attempts of the other members of the Confederation to load 
it with an unreasonable weight. A long and bitter discussion in Con¬ 
gress followed, and led to the resignation of Gerry, which the General 
Court of Massachusetts approved by formal resolution. 63 Though 
finally the active opposition of the Bay State died away, so late as 
1785 Gerry blamed unfair taxation for the depressed value of 
Massachusetts lands, 64 and in the Massachusetts convention for rati¬ 
fying the Constitution, Rufus King reproached other States for doing 
less than their share. 

In the New York convention Alexander Hamilton voiced similar 
reproaches. Amid all its distresses, he said, New York State had 
fully complied with the national requisitions, and could not all the 
others have paid at least in part? Yet New Hampshire, which had 
suffered nothing from invasion in the Revolution, had paid not a 
cent since the peace, and North Carolina had been equally delin¬ 
quent. One State alone, he declared, the State of Pennsylvania^ had 
borne New York company in perfectly discharging its duty to the 
Union. 65 But in North Carolina a different story was heard. Hugh 

83 Austin’s “Gerry,” I, 319; Bolles, “Financial Hist. U. S. ” I 93-94- 

M Lands in adjoining States, he said, paid not over two-thirds the taxes on Massa¬ 
chusetts lands; King, “Life and Corr.,” I, 89-90. 

w Elliot’s “Debates,” II, 56, 232. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


578 

Williamson, a member of Congress, in 1784 opposed the cession of 
the transmontane country to the nation because, in his opinion, 
North Carolina had not been given financial credit for her military 
assistance to Virginia and South Carolina, and for expeditions against 
the Indians, while other States had been recompensed for similar 
effort. 66 In Virginia keen apprehension was long expressed by some 
legislators lest the Union cheat it out of what it had spent on the 
George Rogers Clark campaign. 

Many harsh speeches could be quoted attacking the alleged un¬ 
evenness of State burdens. Richard Dobbs Spaight, of North Caro¬ 
lina, wrote in reference to the New England States the year after the 
signing of peace that ever since he entered Congress they had tried 
to weaken the power of the Union, and sacrifice the strength and 
dignity of the nation to their self-importance. They had attempted, 
he said, to dispute the powers expressly granted Congress by the 
Articles of Confederation. The obstinate refusal of Rhode Island in 
1782 to accede to the first proposal for a Federal impost was, as 
Madison put it, a theme for the most pointed recriminations in other 
States. New York’s refusal to consent to the second impost plan 
produced a like wave of resentment among both the public creditors 
and the friends of a firm national government. Other States saw 
her conduct for what it was, a selfish effort to hold to her revenues 
from commerce and thus line her purse while increasing the burdens 
of the rest of the nation. But hard speeches did little harm. The 
indignation which one State felt over the evasion of financial duty 
by another State led many citizens to think not of further relaxing 
the national authority, but of increasing it. 

V. Territorial Disputes 

Territorial differences, the second group in the list Jefferson fur¬ 
nished his French correspondent, caused several spectacular quarrels 
among the States, but they were not dangerous to the Union. The 
importance of the two chief disputes has been exaggerated because 
they involved actual bloodshed. These are the bickering of three 
Northern States over Vermont, and the sharp dispute between citi¬ 
zens of Connecticut and of Pennsylvania over the Wyoming Val¬ 
ley: both acute less as they had to do with the mere sovereignty of 

88 Boyd’s “N. Carolina,” 13, 14. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 579 

rival States over the disputed area than with the actual ownership 
of the land by rival sets of farmers; both producing more smoke than 
fire; and both settled, in their main aspects, by Congress. Other 
territorial disputes occurred over boundaries, but resulted in little 
ill feeling, while it must be remembered that the settlement of one 
complicated land controversy by the relinquishment of the North¬ 
west Territory to the nation strengthened the Union in a signal de¬ 
gree. 

Actual though petty civil war accompanied the clash of New York, 
New Hampshire, and Massachusetts over the district which a ma¬ 
jority of the people of the Green Mountains declared to constitute 
the independent commonwealth of Vermont. The origins of the 
disagreement antedated the Revolution by a generation. For many 
years after the appointment of Benning Wentworth as Governor of 
New Hampshire in 1741, the Green Mountain territory was in dis¬ 
pute between that Colony and New York. Pending the decision of 
the Crown, Wentworth granted many charters for towns west of the 
Connecticut River, issuing no less than 118 between 1760 and 1764. 
New York, while making no grants, warned settlers against accepting 
those from New Hampshire. On July 20, 1764, the King in Council 
declared in favor of New York’s claim, and ordered that the west 
bank of the Connecticut should be the dividing line between the 
two Provinces. 

Populated in large part by men from Massachusetts and Con¬ 
necticut, and remote from the capitals of New Hampshire and New 
York, the Vermont towns had developed a purely democratic gov¬ 
ernment which made them so many little republics. They were at¬ 
tached to their town-meeting autonomy, which they would lose under 
New York; and as Yankees they disliked New York manners and 
modes of thought. Nor were these objections all. New York, as¬ 
serting that the Order in Council issued in 1764 was retroactive, 
and had invalidated the Vermonters’ title to their farms, tried sys¬ 
tematically to evict large groups of settlers. The Vermonters had 
been ready to defend these farms in the French and Indian War, and 
were ready now. Particularly on the west side of the Green Moun¬ 
tains, their indignation rose high; and when the Revolution began, 
armed bands were ready to take the field against their fellow-provin¬ 
cials of New York. 

With the opening of the war, the people of the New Hampshire 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


580 

Grants seized the opportunity to throw off the British yoke and the 
New York yoke together. The town committees of safety declared 
themselves as emphatically against the latter as the former; on April 
11, 1775, a convention of committeemen met in Westminster, and 
voted that the Grants must “wholly renounce and resist the adminis¬ 
tration of the government of New York.’ 7 In the early part of the 
next year a convention from the towns remonstrated to Congress 
against the necessity of owning allegiance to New York; and although 
Congress recommended submission until the struggle with the mother 
country was ended, the movement for declaring a new State grew 
apace. It came to a head when on January 15, 1777, a convention 
representing all sections of the Grants met at Westminster, pro¬ 
claimed the region a free and independent State, named it New 
Connecticut, and appointed delegates to petition Congress for repre¬ 
sentation—that is, to demand admission to the Union. This same 
convention, in an adjourned session, appointed a committee to draft 
a Constitution, and called a convention at Windsor for July 2, 1777, 
to act upon it. This, of course, was the summer of Burgoyne’s in¬ 
vasion and defeat. 

So much for the action of the Vermonters against New York; but 
how were New Hampshire and Massachusetts embroiled? While 
the new State was being formed, a certain discontent in the towns 
east of the Connecticut River, within the plain limits of New Hamp¬ 
shire, had been increasing. They were so remote from Portsmouth 
that the New Hampshire government over them had been little more 
than a name, and they did not want it to be anything else. Like 
their neighbors west of the Connecticut, they believed in almost uni¬ 
versal manhood suffrage and the simplest form of town-meeting ad¬ 
ministration. Disliking Portsmouth for fear of its interference, they 
also disliked it because they had no sufficient legislative voice. 
First Hanover and its neighbors, where Dartmouth College had been 
founded in 1769, and where President Eleazer Wheelock was proving 
himself a gifted public leader, protested to the Provincial Congress 
concerning the under-representation of the region. Then groups of 
other towns did the same. Most of those who supported these pro¬ 
tests were actuated by high principles, believing that it was hypocrisy 
to revolt against English tyranny, and at the same time to permit 
domestic tyranny and injustice; but as the movement tended toward 
a denial of the governmental power of New Hampshire, baser motives 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 581 

appeared, for some men were willing to use it to escape the taxes and 
troop-levies called for from Portsmouth. 

Gradually there grew up the so-called Hanover Party, comprising 
towns both north and south of Hanover, and both east and west of 
the Connecticut River, but near it. Its activities were directed by a 
self-perpetuating body which had met in the college town in the 
month of the national declaration of independence, and which called 
itself the United Committees of the New Hampshire Grants. It 
leaned more and more to the side of the New Connecticut—also 
termed the Bennington or Vermont—government, with which it had 
almost everything in common. During July of 1777, at the same 
time that Vermont adopted her Constitution, the towns in the Han¬ 
over party declared that their people had no political connection 
with New Hampshire and were in “a state of nature.” Six months 
later, when the government of Vermont was in full operation, with 
the rough but able Thomas Chittenden in the Governor’s chair, the 
Hanover Party applied for a union with the new State. The Vermont 
Assembly wisely displayed some reluctance in thus provoking the 
hostility of New Hampshire, and referred the question to the Green 
Mountain people at large, who voted emphatically for the admission 
of the additional settlements. Some sixteen towns east of the Con¬ 
necticut were therefore authorized to elect representatives to the 
Vermont Assembly, which soon proclaimed its determination “to 
maintain and support entire the State as it now stands.” 

The result was what might have been expected. New Hampshire, 
under President Weare, had no intention of letting a large part of 
the western side of the State be torn from it, and appealed to the 
Continental Congress for help. Vermont sent the shrewd Ethan 
Allen to Philadelphia to learn what the national authorities were 
likely to do, and Allen reported that while Congress was indisposed 
to support New York’s claims to the Green Mountain region, it cer¬ 
tainly was not going to allow the incorporation of the sixteen New 
Hampshire towns in Vermont. He believed that unless the sixteen 
towns were relinquished, “the whole power of the Confederacy . . . 
will join to annihilate the State of Vermont and to vindicate the 
right of New Hampshire to maintain, inviolate, the articles of con¬ 
federation which guarantee to each State their privileges and im¬ 
munities.” This was clearly probable; a strong minority in the 
sixteen towns was opposed to the union; and Vermont hastily re- 


582 THE AMERICAN STATES 

treated. In February, 1779, the connection with the Hanover group 
was completely severed, and Vermont was restored to its original 
modest boundaries. The little State had troubles enough on the west 
without inviting more on the east, for a sporadic partisan warfare 
had broken out along the New York border. 

By surrendering her thin claims to the Hanover towns, Vermont 
purchased the support of New Hampshire in her stubborn struggle 
against New York. Perhaps Ethan Allen at Philadelphia made a 
bargain to this effect with the New Hampshire delegates in Congress; 
perhaps there was no bargain at all. At any rate, New Hampshire 
was nervous lest the Vermont region should fall into the maw of 
New York, and earnestly debated the best means of preventing 
such a disaster to New England. The legislators, after hearing some 
Vermont representatives, finally decided (June 24, 1779) that New 
Hampshire should claim the whole of the territory, just as if the 
Crown had never made its decision of 1764 in favor of New York; 
but that if Congress should allow the Grants to become a separate 
State, then New Hampshire should acquiesce. In other words, New 
Hampshire’s claim was to be maintained only until New York was de¬ 
feated. With this decision, the tavern-keeper Governor, Chittenden, 
and Ethan and Ira Allen, were well satisfied. In the same month 
Massachusetts came to the aid of Vermont in the same fashion, her 
Legislature entering a claim to the territory on the basis of the 
cloudy terms of the old Plymouth Charter. The Crown had ruled 
against this claim, also, but it was a sufficient basis for the Massa¬ 
chusetts legislators in their wish to defeat New York’s pretensions. 

Had the Green Mountain boys been left alone to contend against 
New York, the issue would certainly have gone against them. The 
little mountain commonwealth would have had no choice but to 
submit, or to go over to the British side under the promise of being 
made a full Province. But with New England actively behind her, 
for Connecticut was warmly interested in the State her sons had 
done so much to settle, the case was different. The question was 
thrown into Congress, where it would be settled not in a narrow 
legalistic way, but with full attention to the principle of self- 
determination. New England wanted the additional sectional votes 
in Congress, and every small State in the Union objected to a further 
increase of New York’s extensive territory. On September 24, 1779, 
Congress took a step which was in itself a victory for the Ver- 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 583 

monters. It requested New York, New Hampshire, and Massachu¬ 
setts to confer upon it the authority to adjudicate the whole con¬ 
troversy, and invited all three, with Vermont, to send representatives 
to Philadelphia on February 1, 1780, when it promised to make a 
final decision. The three States accepted the invitation, but Ver¬ 
mont, asserting that it was independent of the Confederation, de¬ 
clined to do so. The other accredited agents appeared at Philadelphia 
on the date named, among them a spokesman for the Hanover group 
of towns; Congress, since not enough disinterested States were 
represented in its membership at the moment, had to postpone the 
decision, but it was believed by all the parties that the postpone¬ 
ment would be brief. 67 

The subsequent history of the Vermont question, though interest¬ 
ing, is too complicated for detailed rehearsal. After much maneuver¬ 
ing and counter-maneuvering, Congress on August 20, 1781, adopted 
a resolve that an indispensable condition of the admission of Ver¬ 
mont would be its relinquishment of all its claims to territory in 
New York west of the Massachusetts line as extended northward, 
and to territory east of the Connecticut in New Hampshire. This 
resolution in effect meant that Vermont’s ultimate admission was 
certain. Six months later it acceded to the conditions laid down by 
Congress, and its entrance into the Union might have followed at 
once. For nine years such entrance was prevented by New York’s 
maintenance of her claim, which was not withdrawn until 1790; but 
no one took New York’s pretensions seriously, while Vermont’s 
position, free from any share in the Continental debt or burdens, was 
a happy one. The whole dispute never seriously affected the good 
relations of any two States, and the calming and healing manner in 
which Congress treated it increased the slender prestige of that 
body. 

All danger, if any existed, of a breach between two States over 
the Vermont territory was at an end soon after the war with 
England ended. The clash of Connecticut and Pennsylvania settlers 
over the Wyoming Valley, however, occurred in 1784, when the 
wartime bonds of the Union had been decidedly relaxed. If the 
dispute had been between the two States, instead of between irre¬ 
sponsible militiamen and land-speculators of Pennsylvania and a 

87 On the Vermont question see Stackpole, “Hist. N. H.,” II, passim; Ira Allen; 
B. II. Hall; Hiland Hall; Vermont Historical Society Collections, I and II. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


584 

mere land company of Connecticut, its consequences might have 
been grave; but the governments were not brought into conflict. 

This controversy also had its roots in colonial times. The beauti¬ 
ful Wyoming Valley, twenty-one miles long and three wide, lies 
beyond the Blue Ridge, with the Susquehanna rolling placidly 
through it. Within it now stands the city of Wilkes-Barre. When 
looked upon by the New Englanders who spied it out in 1750, it 
was a beautifully variegated tract of woodland and meadow, of level 
plain and rolling hills. There were mountain ranges on every side, 
with gaps through which the sparkling river entered and left the 
valley; and the size of the groves of sycamore, pine, laurel, and oak 
was alone enough to show the fertility of the soil, the bed of a 
prehistoric lake. The Delawares, Shawnees, and Nanticokes held 
the sides of the valley, which abounded in game. Connecticut 
claimed that by her royal charter of 1662, which extended her domain 
westward to the Pacific, she was entitled to the whole northern 
portion of the region now the State of Pennsylvania. This charter 
contained a proviso excepting the lands of New York, but not any 
other territory, while the charter to Penn which overlapped this 
grant was not issued until 1681, and was hence in the eyes of 
Connecticut men subordinate to their earlier assignment of a great 
continental strip. Interest in the western lands awoke in Connec¬ 
ticut about the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1753 the 
Susquehanna Company was formed to develop these wilderness 
possessions. 

The Connecticut citizens composing the company purchased the 
Wyoming Valley from the Six Nations in 1754, although the Penn 
family, Isaac Norris, and Dr. Franklin stoutly resisted the purchase 
on behalf of Pennsylvania. Both the Penns and the Connecticut 
government submitted their claims to British lawyers, and they 
obtained conflicting legal opinions as to the validity of their titles. 
For a time neither side made any determined effort to settle the 
disputed region. Then in 1762 two hundred Yankee farmers, with 
their families, entered it, but were promptly expelled by an Indian 
raid. Six years later the Penns made an effort to gain prior pos¬ 
session, persuading the Six Nations to denounce their deed to the 
Connecticut company and re-deed the valley to Pennsylvania; and 
they stationed henchmen in the district, with orders to hold it 
against all comers. The result, when in 1769 a fresh body of Con- 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 585 

necticut settlers arrived, was the so-called first Pennamite War, 
a summer of desultory fighting between Penn’s guards and the 
Susquehanna Company’s colonists, which ended with the eviction, 
in August, 1771, of the Penns’ agents. Happily, it was a private 
rather than public conflict: the peace-loving Pennsylvanians assumed 
that they had nothing to do with the Proprietary’s quarrel, and 
Connecticut did not directly support the Susquehanna company. 

At the outbreak of the Revolution occurred the Second Pennamite 
War, a much more serious episode. A considerable number of 
Pennsylvanians who had acquired a pecuniary interest in the Valley 
now supported the Penn claim; while the region, filling fast with 
Connecticut settlers, had been regularly organized under the Con¬ 
necticut government—it was the town of Westmoreland, a part of 
Litchfield County, and it annually elected members to the Con¬ 
necticut Legislature. Though Congress tried to stop the quarrel, it 
ended only when a strong Pennsylvania column had been thrown 
back by the Yankee defence; and then it ended only temporarily. 68 
The able-bodied settlers went into the Continental army, forming the 
24th Connecticut regiment. In 1776 Connecticut erected the Valley 
into Westmoreland County, and Connecticut taxes were levied, Con¬ 
necticut laws were enforced, and Connecticut courts held full sway. 
But Pennsylvanians deplored the thought of having their State 
divided by a broad band of Connecticut territory, they knew that 
the acres involved were yearly growing more valuable, and they 
resented the presence of the Yankees in their midst, a people with 
strange manners and ideas. The two States would have continued 
to quarrel during the Revolution had Congress not asked them to 
let the issue lie dormant until the close of the struggle with the 
Crown. Within fifteen days after the surrender of Cornwallis, 
Pennsylvania petitioned Congress for a hearing of the case under 
that clause of the Articles of Confederation which provided a means 
of settling boundary disputes. Indeed, it was high time that the 
long controversy was set at rest. 

Connecticut wished for a delay until it could bring certain papers 

88 See Silas Deane’s notes upon the Second Pennamite War, Corr. and Journals of 
S. B. Webb, I, 107-10. Deane (October 15, 1775) says that the richest men in Phila¬ 
delphia had become interested in the Wyoming lands, and had raised money for an 
armed force to drive off the Yankees. But he also blames the Connecticut settlers, 
who “have conducted in a most shocking manner.” The excitement in Philadelphia 
was so great that “the very union of the Colonies” was thrown into a “critical situa¬ 
tion.” But consultations in Congress led to an agreement permitting the settlers to 
remain peaceably on the land during the war with England. 


5 86 THE AMERICAN STATES 

from England, but Congress ruled against this; and the two States 
agreeing upon a court of five commissioners—Wm. Whipple, 
Welcome Arnold, Daniel Brearly, Cyrus Griffin, and W. C. Houston 
—it opened its sessions in November, 1782, at Trenton. Upon strictly 
legal grounds Connecticut had an excellent case, as had New York 
in the Vermont controversy. But the question was one of expediency 
and equity, of national and State policy, rather than of mere law, 
and it has been thought that the leaders in Congress gave the court 
a strong hint that its decision should be in favor of Pennsylvania. 
At any rate, as far-sighted men the commissioners could hardly have 
decided except against Connecticut. If Connecticut were to use a 
careless, antiquated royal grant to split a State into two fragments, 
and to leap over New York to a New Connecticut on the west, other 
States could do the same. Massachusetts claimed a large section 
of western New York, and if the claim were allowed, it would cut 
New York entirely off from Lake Erie. It was clearly for the best 
interests of the nation that each State should be compact and well 
unified; it was also for the best interests of the States—Connecticut 
would have difficulty in governing a New Connecticut far to the 
westward. Already the small seaboard States without western 
grants were agitating for the relinquishment of such claims by their 
neighbors. On December 30 the court unanimously decided that 
the jurisdiction and preemption of the land lay with Pennsylvania. 

This decree, the first by which a serious collision between two 
States was averted under the Articles of Confederation, was quietly 
accepted by Connecticut. Now the Articles provided that in all 
boundary disputes a tribunal distinct from that which decided 
political boundaries might pass upon questions of private title to 
the lands; and the Trenton Court wrote the Supreme Executive 
Council of Pennsylvania urging that the Connecticut settlers be left 
undisturbed on their farms and in Wilkes-Barre until this tribunal 
could be selected. Connecticut and the Susquehanna Company had 
every reason to believe that the Wyoming settlers would be left 
virtually undisturbed. They had come to Wyoming with full faith 
in their land-titles, had conquered a virgin wilderness, and had dis¬ 
played great heroism in defending the whole northern border of 
Pennsylvania from the Indians. Moreover, it had become customary 
in boundary disputes to allow the private holders of the soil to 
continue unharmed by changes in political jurisdiction. They had 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 587 

been thus left untouched in boundary disputes between Connecticut 
and all three of her neighbors, and between Massachusetts and New 
Hampshire. In the boundary disputes of Pennsylvania herself with 
Maryland and Virginia the original settlers had remained in posses¬ 
sion of their farms. 

It is unnecessary to recall in detail how completely Pennsylvania 
disappointed the hope that she would deal generously with the 
Wyoming Yankees. Her government, quite properly, remodeled 
the civil administration of the Valley, organizing two Pennsylvania 
townships there; but it did not stop with this. It suppressed the 
letter of the Court of Commissioners recommending a judicial adjust¬ 
ment of the land titles, and the Legislature, moved by a powerful 
lobby of land-claimants and by a selfish view of State interest, merely 
appointed commissioners to report a plan for accommodating the 
rival claimants. As was expected, the commissioners went to the 
Valley under the influence of the land-jobbers, made no real effort 
to arrange a compromise, and drew up a plan for ousting the Con¬ 
necticut settlers—most of them to go within the year, the widows 
of men killed in the Revolution or the Indian massacre within two 
years. The Legislature approved it, satirically promised “a reason¬ 
able compensation” in raw State land to the families it was depriving 
of their well-established homes, and sent the commissioners back, 
with two companies of soldiers to support them. A bloody civil war, 
the history of which is familiar, at once broke out. 

Had this guerrilla conflict continued long, a dangerous bitterness 
might have been generated between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. 
But sober men in the latter State quickly called a halt upon the 
evictions, burnings, and murderings. It was in May that the Penn¬ 
sylvania troops drove the unoffending Yankee families eastward to 
the Delaware. When the State authorities heard of this, they dis¬ 
patched the Northumberland sheriff to call the settlers back, dis¬ 
missed the commander, and sent word to the Circuit Court judges 
to bring the aggressors to sharp account. When in July renewed 
fighting impelled the Executive Council to order militia to the scene, 
an unwise step, President Dickinson sent the Council a vigorous 
protest from his sickbed, deprecating the use of force. He pointed 
out that the settlers would regard the arrival of the militia “as the 
commencement of a war against them, and perhaps others, whose 
sentiments are of vastly more importance, may be of the same 


588 THE AMERICAN STATES 

opinion.” Moreover, in June the Council of Censors had begun its 
second session and it promptly remonstrated. Everyone knew 
what the Continental Congress felt regarding such occurrences. 
Above all, even the legislators directly under the influence of the 
lobby saw now that their arbitrary course was impracticable, and 
that the settlers simply would not submit to be ousted. At the close 
of summer they passed a new law to restore the dispossessed settlers 
to their home, pending an investigation to determine their rights 
under the Trenton decision, and on September 9 they appointed 
four commissioners to carry out this law. The Connecticut farmers 
were allowed peacefully to harvest their crops, and they celebrated 
Thanksgiving with a sense of returning security. 69 

There had been some excitement in Connecticut when the news 
of the painful flight of the evicted colonists to the Delaware reached 
New Haven and Hartford, but it was not marked. The people in 
general had never taken a keen interest in the Connecticut claims. 
Some of their leaders had harshly criticized the belligerent conduct of 
the Connecticut settlers in the second Pennamite War, Silas Deane, 
then in the Continental Congress, saying that they had “conducted 
in a most shocking manner”; and a little distrust had survived from 
that year. It has been supposed that the Trenton decision was 
arrived at with the possible help of a secret understanding between 
Connecticut and Congress, since Connecticut immediately afterwards 
ceded the nation all her western lands save the Reserve; at any 
rate, the State had resolved without heartburning to have done with 
the Pennsylvania lands. The Connecticut Legislature in the autumn 
of 1784 contented itself with sending a protest to the Continental 
Congress, and soon learned that there was no cause for real alarm. 

In its later phases the dispute can be looked at in almost a 
humorous light, for as in Vermont, it called forth a good deal of 
mere bluster. The Susquehanna Company during 1785, without en¬ 
couragement from Connecticut, took militant steps to meet the 
possibility of another attempt to evict its settlers. In midsummer 
it held a meeting at Hartford, at which it offered any 400 men who 
would go within the next few months to the Wyoming Valley, and 

6# See Pa. Archives, Series IV, Vol. Ill, 973 ff. It must be recalled that the 
Pennsylvania Legislature and Supreme Executive Council were in the hands of the 
radical Constitutionalist party, who were amenable to the influence of the land lobby; 
while President Dickinson and a majority of the Council of Censors were men of 
principle and responsibility, who took the other side. The exertions of Dickinson 
and the Censors, supported by a revulson in public sentiment, caused the State to 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 589 

agree to reside there for three years, a half-share apiece in the 
company. Thus, in the Company’s cant phrase, “Connecticut would 
man her rights.” A militia force was organized in the Valley, which 
by the spring of 1786 enrolled nearly 600 men, ready to fight at the 
first appearance of a new armed force. Ethan Allen was induced, 
by a generous land-grant, to visit the region and engage to serve in 
the event of hostilities. Some of the Connecticut settlers in the 
Green Mountains, having won the one struggle, enlisted in the other 
by coming to the Pennsylvania lands. In all, by the summer of 
1786 about 250 new families were in the district, enough to assist 
the Company materially in its claim to a sort of squatter sovereignty. 

But the Company was not content with merely protecting the 
settlers in their Valley farms. Its members hoped to hold to their 
entire purchase from the Indians, and were hence unwilling to abide 
by the Trenton decision. Partly by members of the Company in 
Connecticut, partly by resolute Wyoming leaders like John Franklin, 
an old scheme was revived for establishing a new State in the region. 
Franklin traveled to Connecticut and urged it energetically; Oliver 
Wolcott outlined a Constitution; and it was suggested that William 
Judd, who in Jefferson’s day came to be known as a Republican 
leader, should be the first Governor. This scheme was of course 
preposterous, and though it obtained support even in New York, 
where some men liked the idea of cutting Pennsylvania in two, 
few regarded it seriously. 70 

Like the Vermont question, the Wyoming Valley quarrel was 
not fully settled until after the framing of the Constitution, but it 
was virtually settled long before and had passed out of most men’s 
minds. The Pennsylvania Government, after its first selfish blunders, 
acted with commendable moderation. It happened that Timothy 
Pickering, of Puritan blood, born in Salem, educated at Harvard, 
the head of a Massachusetts regiment in the war, was residing in 
Philadelphia in 1786, and had resolved to find a home in some 
new frontier or wilderness settlement. He was persuaded to visit 

retrace the harsh and unjustifiable steps it had taken under the lead of hotheaded men. 
Benjamin Rush, an Anti-Constitutionalist, was among those disgusted by the affair, 
and wrote Pickering apropos of it: “All will end well. The new Federal Government, 
like a new Continental wagon, will overset our State dung-cart, with all its dirty 
contents (reverend and irreverend), and thereby restore order and happiness to 
Pennsylvania.” (Upham’s “Pickering,” II, 3 OI 0 

70 Some light is thrown upon this by the local histories of the Wyoming Valley, 
Luzerne County, and Wilkes-Barre; and a great deal by the Fairfield County Hist. 
Soc. Reports, 1896-97. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


590 

the turbulent Wyoming region, which he first inspected in August, 

1786, and in which he prepared to take up his residence in January, 

1787. He called meetings in the villages; he announced the erection 
of a new county, Luzerne, the Legislature having evoked its former 
organization of the Valley; and he assured the people that the 
original settlers would probably be quieted in the possession of their 
land by the next Legislature. New outbreaks occurred among the 
wilder Connecticut element that fall, and on October 2 Pickering 
was actually driven from his home by a lawless crew headed by John 
Franklin. But these disturbances were merely a brief final spasm, 
and an adjustment satisfactory to the majority on both sides was 
soon reached. Its cornerstone was a law of 1787 by which those 
settlers who had been in the Valley at the time of the Trenton 
decision were confirmed in the possession of the lands they had 
obtained from the Susquehanna Company, while the Pennsylvania 
claimants of the same land were awarded compensation in another 
district. 71 

Beside the Vermont and Wyoming disputes, all the mere boundary 
controversies were unimportant. The former genuinely alarmed 
lovers of State concord for a time; the latter were mere irritations, 
not one of which in itself threatened serious consequences. Their 
danger was cumulative. National leaders feared the psychological 
effect of a succession of petty altercations all over America, from 
the Merrimac to the Savannah. Thus Jay wrote Livingston at the 
end of 1782 that “The boundaries between the States should be 
immediately settled and all cause of dispute between them removed.” 
Eight months later he counselled Gouverneur Morris: “Settle your 
boundaries without delay. It is better that some improper boundaries 
be fixed, than any left in dispute. In a word, everything conducive 
to union and constitutional energy of government should be culti¬ 
vated. . . .” Not all the boundaries were actually fixed before 
1789— some not f° r decades; but the disagreement caused no lasting 
nor extensive warmth. 

Georgia and South Carolina petitioned Congress in 1786 to de¬ 
termine their disputed western boundaries, and the Congress duly 

71 Upham’s “Pickering,” II Ch. 7. Pickering found about 250 families of old 
Connecticut se ttl ers in the Wyoming Valley, and as many more of the new settlers 
which the Susquehanna Company had sent out with a grant of a half-share each. 
The former were satisfied to be secured in the title to their homes; the latter claimed 
for the company the great tract of land included in the original purchase from the 
Indians. Pickering helped to frame the legislation of 1787. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 591 

constituted a court of commissioners. Before it could act, however, 
the two States came to a satisfactory decision by direct negotiation, 72 
which Congress duly ratified. 73 North Carolina had but one boundary 
quarrel of importance, that old one with Virginia to which William 
Byrd has given literary immortality in his “History of the Dividing 
Line.” An effort in 1778 to carry the line between the States west¬ 
ward to the Tennessee River failed when the commissioners survey¬ 
ing it quarreled, and a strip was left to be a theme of controversy 
for many years. 74 Virginia’s boundary dispute with Maryland 75 re¬ 
mained unsettled even when Washington became President, but 
that with Pennsylvania, 76 involving the curious knob which, as part 
of West Virginia, still projects northward between Ohio and Pennsyl¬ 
vania, and is called “the Panhandle,” was ended by a joint com¬ 
mission in 1779. 77 Pennsylvania easily fixed her northern line in 
agreement with New York, and it was marked out by David Ritten- 
house in 1785-87. Her charter boundary barely enabled her to 
touch Lake Erie, but the break in the western extremity of the long 
border with New York, which gave her a satisfactory lake frontage, 
with the port of Erie, was obtained later by purchase. This “Erie 
triangle,” which had been jointly claimed by New York and Massa¬ 
chusetts, was ceded by them to the United States, and the nation 
permitted Pennsylvania to purchase it in 1792 for the modest sum 
of $151,640. New York and Massachusetts settled their territorial 
difficulties after the war by a meeting of agents at Hartford, Conn., 
where it was agreed that Massachusetts should have the preemptive 
rights to two large tracts within New York’s bounds, totalling about 
five million acres. New York of course retained all the govern¬ 
mental rights. One tract, of only 230,000 acres, was near the center 
of the State; the other lay farther west, in the Genesee Valley and 
along Lake Erie. Massachusetts soon (1787 and 1791) sold these 
New York lands for sums aggregating $1,100,000. 

72 See note in Pa. Mercury, June i, 1787- 

73 In 1777 some ambitious South Carolinians proposed the consolidation of South 

Carolina and Georgia, or rather the absorption of Georgia by South Carolina. This 
so irritated the Georgia Government that a reward of £100 was offered for the 
arrest of W. H. Drayton, chief sponsor for the scheme. Knight, “Georgia’s Land¬ 
marks, Memorials, and Legends.” „ „ „ , , „„ , _ 

7 * For disputes over the N. C.-Ga. boundary, see N. C. Booklet, III, paper by D. 
Goodloe. , . , , ,, 

75 Va. and Md. acted most amicably during the war; on this boundary problem, see 

Fund Pubs., Md. Hist. Soc., No. 29. .... . 

76 Some Virginians even claimed Niagara after the war, and wished to garrison it 
after the British evacuation; Public Papers of Geo. Clinton, VIII, 249-50. 

77 Amer. Archives, Series IV, Vol. II, 684. Four commissioners marked the 
boundary in 1785; see Md. Journal, November 22, 1785. 


592 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


VI. The Western Lands An Issue 

So far as strengthening the Union went, the settlement of the 
various boundaries had merely a negative effect; it removed causes 
of disagreement. The settlement of the greatest question of all, 
that of the western lands, operated directly to invigorate the Union, 
and it gave the national government a domain to administer for the 
common good. There existed two dangers to State harmony in the 
unfixed status of the great Northwestern and Southwestern wilderness 
in 1781. One lay in the conflicting claims of a half dozen rival 
States for parts of these regions. New York, Connecticut, and 
Massachusetts could all assert a title to some of the lands northwest 
of the Ohio, and Virginia believed that the whole great region was 
hers. South Carolina and Georgia were in dispute as to part of the 
territory now included in Alabama and Mississippi. But this friction 
was in no wise so threatening as the apprehension and irritation 
which the collective claims bred among the half-dozen States which 
had no pretense to western lands at all. 

Maryland enjoys the credit of being the first to express this 
natural apprehension that she would be overshadowed by mighty 
neighbors expanding over great untouched reaches, and to press for 
the wise solution of the problem ultimately adopted. Her Provin¬ 
cial Convention on October 30, 1776, resolved that “the very ex¬ 
tensive claims of the State of Virginia to the back lands hath no 
foundation in justice, and if the same or any like claim is admitted, 
the freedom of the smaller States and the liberties of America may 
be greatly endangered, this convention being firmly persuaded that, 
if the dominion over these lands should be established by the blood 
and treasure of the United States, such lands ought to be considered 
common stock to be parcelled out at any time into convenient, free, 
and independent govemments. ,, This early action shows remarkable 
alertness and far-sightedness. 

It is unnecessary to rehearse the steps by which the claimant States 
surrendered the Northwest Territory into the nation’s keeping. 
Curiously enough, for some time after Maryland had proposed that 
the Articles of Confederation should give Congress jurisdiction over 
the west, with power to lay it out from time to time in new members 
of the Union, the other small States failed to rally to her side. New 
Jersey and Rhode Island were unwilling to see the West gobbled 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 593 

by a few dominant commonwealths, and brought forward amend¬ 
ments to the proposed Articles of Confederation; but they were 
ready to leave the jurisdiction of the claimant States over the wilder¬ 
ness undisturbed, asking only that the revenues from the sale of the 
lands be reserved to the nation. Maryland, however, stood her 
ground, with ever-increasing support from other parts of the Union. 
Wm. Sharpe, a North Carolina member of Congress, writing Governor 
Caswell in 1779 on the prospects for a durable confederation, referred 
to the “great jealousies” respecting the Western claims, and declared 
that the representatives of some States wished Maryland to refuse 
to ratify the Articles, and to keep the threat of disunion over the 
head of Virginia and other claimants, until they gave up their pre¬ 
tensions. 78 Maryland ratified before they completed this surrender, 
but she had maintained her stubborn position until her victory was 
certain, even without an explicit guarantee of it in an amendment. 
New York had on February 19, 1780, authorized her Congressional 
delegates to make either a partial or complete cession; Connecticut 
offered a conditional surrender of some of her rights on October 10; 
and on January 2, 1781, Virginia voted to give up her lands north¬ 
west of the Ohio upon eight conditions. When all this had been 
done, and not before, Maryland entered the Union. 79 

Maryland’s threat to obstruct a Confederation until her demands 
were met has its resemblance, of course, to Vermont’s threat to join 
the British if her separate existence were not recognized, and the 
Wyoming settlers’ threat to form a new State if they were not left 
alone in their homes. A good deal of resentment was engendered 
while the western lands were under discussion. The larger States 
repeatedly assailed the motives of their lesser neighbors, even the 
cool-headed Madison doing so. Rhode Island was influenced, 
Madison wrote, by “first, a lucrative desire of sharing in the vacant 
territory as a fund of revenue; secondly, by the envy and jealousy 
naturally excited by superior resources and importance.” New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland were actuated partly 
by the same reasons, he added, “but principally by the intrigues of 
their citizens, who are interested in the land companies. The 
decisive influence of this last consideration is manifest from the 

78 N. C. State Records, XIV, 216-17. , . . TT „ A , , T . 

78 The best treatment of Maryland’s struggle is in H. B. Adams, Md. s Influence 
Upon Land Cessions to the U. S.,” supplemented by B. W. Bond, “State Government 
in Md.,” Ch. II. For documents, see Hening’s Statutes, X, 547-507- 


594 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


peculiar and persevering opposition made against Virginia, within 
whose limits those claims lie.” 80 

On the other side, the small States could accuse the western claim¬ 
ants of egregious selfishness. Maryland in 1777-78 made it plain 
that she did not regard the Confederation as necessarily permanent, 
but as a temporary union brought about by circumstances, and in 
which, when these circumstances ceased to operate, “the States 
which have thus acceded to the Confederation will consider it no 
longer binding, and will eagerly embrace the first occasion of assert¬ 
ing their just rights and securing their independence.” Would the 
States which had obtained great western areas then use the wealth 
and power derived from these territories in moderation? Maryland 
feared not: 


Suppose, for instance, Virginia indisputably possessed of the extensive and fertile 
country to which she has set up a claim, what would be the probable consequences 
to Maryland? Virginia, by selling on the most moderate terms a small proportion 
of the lands in question, would draw into her treasury vast sums of money and . . . 
would be enabled to lessen her taxes: lands comparatively cheap and taxes com¬ 
paratively low, with the lands and taxes of an adjacent State, would quickly drain 
the State thus disadvantageously circumstanced of its most useful inhabitants, its 
wealth; and its consequence, in the scale of the confederated States, would sink, of 
course. A claim so injurious to more than one-half, if not the whole of the United 
States, ought to be supported by the clearest evidences of the right. Yet what 
evidences of that right have been produced? . . . We are convinced, policy and 
justice require that a country unsettled at the commencement of this war. claimed 
by the British crown, and ceded to it by the treaty of Paris, should be considered as 
a common property, subject to be parcelled out by Congress into . . . independent 
governments. . . . 


Quotations might be adduced from a dozen sources to show the 
jealous soreness which the non-claimant States felt. In 1779 a 
champion for them expressed the wish in the Pennsylvania Packet, 
the chief commercial journal of the country, that they could strike 
a bargain with Massachusetts and the other States eager to gain 
fishing rights in Canadian waters. They could offer to assist in 
obtaining these rights if the fishing interests would in turn help 
procure a surrender of the western claims. It was a palpable in¬ 
justice for the non-claimant States to be “deprived of any share of 
these lands for which they have drawn their swords as well as 
others and which are the joint possessions of the whole.” Any 
weapon was justified “against the most iniquitous article of the Con¬ 
federation which cedes the just rights of the whole to aggrandize a 
few.” 81 New Jersey in 1784 made an earnest effort to attract the 
loyalist merchants who were being so disgracefully mistreated in 

80 Rives, “Madison,” I, 456-58. 

81 Pa. Packet, August 14, 1779. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 595 

New York city. One reason offered, by those who circulated a 
paper promising to secure peaceful settlement and trade to all the 
loyalists, was the commercial poverty of New Jersey; another was 
that “the other States have not considered us in the Confederation, 
but have reserved to themselves a vast tract of unlocated land to 
defray their quota of the expenses of the war, which expense must 
be collected from the sweat of our brow, though we have undergone 
more than our share of the severities” of the fighting. 82 

A Congressional committee did not exaggerate when it reported 
(September 6, 1780) that a surrender of the territorial claims, at 
least in part, must be vigorously urged, “since they cannot be pre¬ 
served entire without endangering the stability of the general con¬ 
federacy.” The report went on to remind the States “how indis¬ 
pensably necessary it is to establish the federal union on a fixed 
and permanent basis, and on principles acceptable to all its re¬ 
spective members!” The appeal which it embodied was agreed to 
without a roll-call. Unfortunately, even in Congress animosities 
upon the subject were manifest long after 1781, especially as its 
consideration became involved in the sectional intriguing that went 
on. The question had its influence upon the Vermont controversy, 
for at one time Virginia and other Southern States opposed the ad¬ 
mission of Vermont partly because of their fear that the new 
member would throw in her lot with that of the other small States 
in fighting the western claims. The South also felt that New York’s 
partnership with it in the western claims helped to keep Clinton’s 
State outside the Yankee circle. “If this cession should be accepted,” 
wrote Madison after New York’s offer of February, 1780, to give up 
her lands, “and the affair of Vermont terminated, as these are the 
only ties which unite her with the Southern States, she will immedi¬ 
ately connect her policy with that of the Eastern States; so far, at 
least, as the remains of her former prejudices will permit.” The 
machinations of private land interests, like the Indiana or Vandalia 
Companies, whose titles depended upon New York’s claims, played 
a part in Congress. North Carolina made her cession of western 
lands in the spring of 1784 conditional upon the action of other 
States and Congress in totally unrelated matters. She revoked it 
that autumn, explaining that she had voted it “in full confidence that 
the whole expense of Indian expeditions and militia aids to the 


•* Freeman’s Journal, April 21, 1784. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


596 

States of South Carolina and Georgia should pass to account in our 
quota of the continental expenses incurred by the late war; and also 
that the other States holding western territory would make similar 
cessions, and that all the States would unanimously grant imposts of 
five per cent, as a common fund . . and that this confidence had 
been betrayed. 83 

One by one the early State cessions of claims to the northwestern 
territory were stripped of all embarrassing and unallowable condi¬ 
tions. Virginia by an act of October 20, 1783, finally put her grant 
in acceptable form, with only minor restrictions; Massachusetts 
followed her example on November 13, 1784; and Connecticut did 
the same (withholding only the Western Reserve of 3,250,000 acres) 
on May 11, 1786. Congress now controlled almost the whole vast 
territory. It should be noted that the national government was so 
loose that it was not possible fully to nationalize the lands; the 
Articles of Confederation gave Congress only such resources as 
came from the States, and the Northwest could not be vested in 
any single sovereignty. The deeds executed by the various States 
provided that the lands thus ceded should be divided among, or 
their proceeds divided among, the whole sisterhood of States. 

One of the blessings that flowed from the cession, however, was 
that it led Congress to exceed the restrictions placed upon its 
powers. As early as March 1, 1784, a committee of which Jefferson 
was a leading member reported an ordinance, to be the organic law 
for the region. This ordinance was not adopted. But it was of 
great importance simply because it was drafted in spite of the fact 
that Congress, acting alone, had no written authority whatever to 
organize such a government. Presumably this could be done only 
in some manner agreed upon by the States, for the Articles of Con¬ 
federation had not dealt with the contingency. Yet it was not in¬ 
tended that this ordinance should be referred to the States. It was 
called a “charter of compact” among the States to be created and 
the thirteen original States, and its provisions were to stand as 
“fundamental constitutions” without ratification. In this manner did 
a Congressional committee take the first step towards giving Congress 
an exertion of national sovereignty in the field of eminent domain. 
Already the western territory, as a common responsibility and 

88 N. C. State Records, XXIV, 678-79. The North Carolina Legislature ceded the 
western lands again at the fall session in 1789; State Records, XXV, 4-6. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 597 

promise of future greatness, was binding the people together and 
strengthening the central government. 

The Ordinance of 1787 gave final expression to this new and far- 
reaching assumption of national sovereignty by Congress. Passed on 
July 13, 1787, while the Federal Convention was sitting at Phila¬ 
delphia, its full title was “An Ordinance for the Government of the 
Territory of the United States, northwest of the river Ohio.” It 
also was “a compact between the original States, and the people 
and States in the said territory”; and it became effective immedi¬ 
ately, without submission to the various Legislatures or other 
formality. The territorial administration it provided, under Gover¬ 
nor, Secretary, and three judges; the provision it made for a system 
of law; the terms in which it forever prohibited slavery; the en¬ 
couragement it gave to learning; and the method it prescribed for 
the admission of new States to the Union, are familiar. It need 
only be emphasized that the Ordinance looked to a perpetual union 
of the States, indicated astutely the lines along which population and 
property would increase, and provided for the future of that ever 
richer, more populous West as part of the nation. 

No one in the country could now avoid turning his eyes often to 
the west, and whenever he fixed them there, he could not help but 
catch a national as opposed to a particularistic vision. This would 
have been true had the United States been of a different geographical 
shape than it was; but it is seldom realized how much the peculiar 
configuration of the republic in its first years had to do with the 
sectional disagreements and resulting predictions of disunion. It 
was a long belt of settlement, from the snows of Maine to the 
palmettos of Georgia, so narrow that it could be called a ribbon 
of population. General Benjamin Lincoln shrewdly noted that from 
its narrowness and length, lying across different zones, the nation 
was likely to break in two. “Did the United States extend from 
east to west . . . he wrote, “instead of their extending, as they 
do now, from north to south, their union would, probably, be much 
more permanent, and they would be easier governed by the same 
legislative body than in their present situation.” He pointed to the 
“evils, which are consequent on the extent of the United States, 
their different climates, their different productions, and the different 
views of the people in consequence thereof,” adding: “I cannot be¬ 
lieve that these States ever will, or ever can, be governed, and all 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


598 

enjoy equal advantages, by laws which have a general operation.” 
He thought it inevitable that Americans must accept “a division, 
which might be formed upon such principles as would secure our 
public creditors, and thereby our public faith, and our after peace 
and safety by a firm alliance between the divisions.” But the 
growth of the new west, with the colonization of southern Illinois 
and Kentucky by Virginians, and the steady flow of the Pennsylvania 
Scotch-Irish and other Northerners into the southwest, gave the 
nation a new physical appearance and a new outlook. 84 

The inequality in the size and strength of the States was marked 
even after the cession of the western claims. In 1788 Georgia ruled 
over about 153,000 square miles; Virginia over about 103,000; and 
North Carolina over about 84,000—a total of 340,000 for three 
States. The other ten had an aggregate of only 167,000 square 
miles, and Rhode Island had only 1360. But the disparity between 
the great and small States could be used more effectively as an 
argument for a stronger union than as one for distrust and aloofness. 
Hamilton in 1781 suggested that without the stronger union, the 
vanity and ambition of great States might lead them to try to place 
themselves at the head of little independent confederations. 85 So 
Oliver Ellsworth in the Connecticut ratifying convention seven years 
later contended that if his State did not have a powerful Union to 
protect her, she would fall a prey to “the ambition and rapacity of 
New York” and Massachusetts. 86 Men with a federalist bent always 
denied that the great States felt any natural solidarity as against 
the smaller members of the nation. Thus James Wilson in Congress 
defied any man to name any policy on earth which would be for 
the interests of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, and 
would not also be for the interests of lesser States. 87 


VII. Forces Making for Harmony 


In reviewing the disputes of the States over trade matters, their 
disputes over war burdens, and their disputes relating to territory, 
it must not be forgotten that there is also another story; a story of 


84 Lincoln to Rufus King, 1786; King, “Life and Corn,” I, 156-60. 

88 Madison said in 1787: “The weaker you make your confederation, the greater 
the danger to the lesser States. They can only be protected by a strong Federal 
Government.” Yates’s “Notes of Secret Debates,” 181. 

86 Van Santvoord, “Lives Chief Justices,” 232 ff.; Elliot, “Debates,” II. 186. 

8T Journals Cont. Cong., VI, 1105-06. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 599 

forces and events making strongly toward harmony. Some of these 
were slight. Such, for example, was the pride the States felt in 
maintaining a creditable character before the world, and showing 
they were ready for sober self-government. 88 Washington thought 
it worth while in 1784 to mention to Governor Clinton the fact that 
internal dissensions had a tendency to lessen the national character 
and importance in the eyes of European powers. Much more im¬ 
portant was the impulse toward union and harmony given by foreign 
enmities—those of the Indians, Spanish, and British. It is also to 
be remarked that from 1776 to 1789 there was going on a steady 
erasure of institutional differences and of social dissimilarities, making 
harmony more natural. 

While the war with England was formally halted in 1783, the 
war with the Indians never ended. It is true that in 1783-84 there 
was a brief truce along the whole border, for the Indians were 
intimidated by the peace and the withdrawal of their former allies; 
but it was only brief. Irresponsible frontiersmen usually disliked 
the national government, which interfered with their freedom of 
action. The more sober inhabitants of exposed regions, however, 
welcomed its efforts to conclude treaties of peace with the Indians, 
to bring lawless Indian-baiters under control, and to intimidate the 
tribes. Despite the agreements which Congressional commissioners 
made with a number of Indian nations in 1785 and 1786, outlying 
settlements suffered more and more after the former year. The 
northwestern tribes, and especially the Shawnees, Wabash, and 
Miamis, were spoiling for a fight, and roving bands, bringing in 
scalps and plunder, excited the ambitions of the younger warriors. 
It became harder and harder to restrain the frontiersmen from pro¬ 
voked or unprovoked aggressions. Even such a prominent man as 
George Rogers Clark was involved in schemes to lay hands upon 
Indian lands in the northwest, and both the Confederation and 
Virginia had to take action to restrain the adventurers. Farther 
South the Carolinians and Georgians, the Creeks and Cherokees, 
were enacting the same drama—treaties violated upon both sides, in¬ 
vasions of Indian territory by white settlers, and bloody Indian ex¬ 
peditions against peaceful settlements. 

es “\v e ar e known in no part of Europe by any other idea than that of the United 
States; and considered abstractedly from the Confederation, our credit would be 
trivial compared with what we most assuredly might command, if our character as a 
confederated republic was fully established.” N. Y. Packet, July 28, 1785. 


6oo 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


This sporadic warfare grew in intensity until it came to a head 
in the year of the ratification of the Constitution. Had it been a 
more active warfare—had the authority of Congress and the strength 
of the Congressional border forces been more urgently needed—the 
impulse it gave to solidarity among the States would have been 
greater. Benjamin Logan and Simon Kenton, in the north, and 
John Sevier and Joseph Martin in the south, were fast adding to 
their laurels as Indian-fighters. By 1788 the struggle in the South¬ 
west was almost unremitting, the Cherokees, Creeks, and Chicka- 
maugas all being in arms against the whites; and terrible are the 
tales of cold-blooded massacre on both sides. In truth, the irre¬ 
sistible westward tide of civilization made a conflict unavoidable, 
and shrewd statesmen recognized it. The State governments wished 
to postpone till the last moment the open recognition of war on the 
border. But they knew that it was coming; they knew that it would 
be well to be united against that day; and they knew that it would 
be easier to bring the struggle to a quick and successful conclusion 
if they submitted to Federal direction. 

Behind the aggression of the Indians stood always the threat of 
British hostility, for British agents and Tories moved constantly 
among the tribes. The British held the three great lake forts of 
Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac, with the smaller lake posts 
of the region, on the excuse that the Americans had not fulfilled 
their engagements under the treaty of peace. Till they were evacu¬ 
ated, the northern States regarded them nervously. British officers 
continued to administer the civil and military affairs of the Indian 
communities of which these forts and posts were the center, and they 
received the Indian chiefs as active allies. They and the great 
Indian confederacies of the Northwest were one in hating and fear¬ 
ing the march of the settler. There could be no open hostilities 
between British and Americans, but the powerful and inflammable 
feudatories of the former made covert hostilities all too easy. 

More serious still, and more powerful in holding the States to¬ 
gether, were the British discriminations against American commerce. 
In September, 1785, a New York city committee circularized all 
parts of the country in behalf of the impost amendment. “You can¬ 
not but perceive, that although the late treaty with Britain has given 
the name of peace, yet we in fact are called on to wage a variegated 
war,” they wrote. “As the enmity is less open, so the enemies are 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 601 

more numerous.” This fact they used in arguing for fraternal con¬ 
cord: “a happy but severe experience past [has shown], and we 
apprehend a future less happy and more severe will evince, that our 
union is the basis of our grandeur and power.” 89 It was not the 
impost amendment, but another amendment granting Congress the 
power of regulating commerce for fifteen years, that was needed. 
Once given this power, Congress expected to forbid the importation 
of merchandise unless it came either in American ships, or the ships 
of nations which had made satisfactory commercial treaties with us. 
A number of Northern States after 1784 struck at Great Britain 
through their tariff laws, which were unfortunately a jumble of in¬ 
congruities. By the end of 1785 ten States had in some fashion 
approved the amendment drafted to give Congress the desired 
authority, though not with a proper uniformity in the terms used. 
Delaware, Georgia, and South Carolina long failed to approve it at all. 
The effort to unite the States completely against British economic 
aggression thus broke down. But in 1787 it was evident that month 
by month more men and more influential interests were coming to 
Monroe’s conclusion: “I am perfectly satisfied that the more fully 
the subject is investigated, and the better the interests of the States 
severally are understood, the more obvious will appear the necessity 
of committing to the United States permanently the power of regu¬ 
lating their trade.” 

In the Southwest the Spaniards played the same part as the 
British in the Northwest in secretly encouraging Indian attacks; the 
Gardoqui manuscripts show decisively that in 1786, when that 
minister was pretending the greatest friendliness toward the United 
States, the Spanish were supplying the Creeks with arms and ammu¬ 
nition. The Madrid Government was enraged when it learned of 
the secret clause in the Treaty of Paris by which America and Eng¬ 
land arranged that if the latter recovered West Florida from Spain, 
the boundary between it and the United States should then be re¬ 
shifted to the north. The Spanish closure of the Mississippi equally 
enraged the South and Southwest. When the unexcitable Jay believed 
that a war with Spain was inevitable if the United States pursued 
the course determined upon, it is evident that the possibility of such 
a conflict had some weight in the scales against careless disunion. 
No such war could be won if the States quarreled among themselves. 


•• N. y. Packet, November io, 1785. 


602 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Year by year the social and political improvements wrought in 
the different States softened the differences among them. Carter 
Braxton, one of the most determined conservatives of the South, 
speaking of the people of New England in the Virginia Convention 
before independence, remarked: “I abhor their manners—I abhor 
their laws—I abhor their governments—I abhor their religion.” 90 
But when Jefferson and Madison had carried out most of their eco¬ 
nomic program, when primogeniture and entail were gone, when the 
church establishment had been destroyed, when a State Constitution 
had expressed doctrines of almost a “levelling” spirit, the Virginians 
found fewer dissimilarities between themselves and the Yankees. 
The upland inhabitants would have admitted that they and the 
farmers of Massachusetts had nearly everything in common. The 
revision of the State Constitutions made towards the same goal, for 
it tended to give all Americans much the same local government. 
Dr. Benjamin Rush in Congress in the summer of 1776 said that the 
United States was a true nation—“Our trade, language, customs, 
manners, don’t differ more than they do in Great Britain.” 91 This 
was indisputable, and the States grew more, not less, alike. It was 
because of the obliteration of small social and institutional differ¬ 
ences that a New York correspondent of the Pennsylvania Packet 
was able to write in November, 1789: 

A happy revolution of sentiment is observed to have taken place throughout the 
United States—local views and narrow prejudices are universally reprobated. A 
generous, national spirit pervades the whole Union. Formerly we used to call 
ourselves Englishmen, Germans, Irishmen, Scotchmen, etc., according to the country 
from whence we respectively originated—but now even the distinctions of States are 
scarcely heard—and like other great nations, who have risen to fame and empire, 
we are proud to be distinguished by the name of the country we inhabit, Americans. 92 

Predictions of total disunion, warnings of anarchy, were common 
from 1776 to 1788. Sometimes they were used to frighten men into 
greater cordiality towards proposals for strengthening the powers of 
Congress—thus Hamilton used them in his third Continentalist essay 
in 1781. Sometimes their authors were quite sincere. Early in the 
war General Knox repeatedly wrote that the Union was upon the 
verge of dissolution. Richard Henry Lee meant every word when 
he wrote in 1777: “I am persuaded as I am of my existence, that 
had it not been for Virginia and Jersey, with Georgia sometimes, 
our union would ere now have been by this means [local jealousies] 

90 MS. “Notes of Benj. Rush,” Ridgeway Branch Library Co. of Philadelphia. 

91 Journals Cont. Cong., VI, 1081. See, to the same effect, “Army Corr. of John 
Laurens,” 89-90. 

92 November 2, 1789. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 603 

broken, like a potter’s vessel dashed against a rock.” He ventured 
only to hope that this supreme evil might not take place before peace 
was established. Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia told 
Washington in 1786 that the Legislature feared for the breaking up 
of the nation—“What our enemies have foretold, seems to be hasten¬ 
ing to its accomplishment.” 

But especially after 1781, nine out of ten of those who expressed 
a fear of disunion did not fear the shattering of the republic into 
its thirteen original parts; they feared its splitting into two, or 
possibly three or four, sections. It was not total disunion, but sec¬ 
tional disintegration, that threatened. Richard D. Spaight, inform¬ 
ing Governor Martin of North Carolina in 1784 that in his view the 
New England States had tried to weaken the Union to increase their 
own importance, said that they were pressing so hard upon the 
national framework that “I imagine it will break before they are well 
aware of it.” A dissolution, he felt, would be to New England’s 
disadvantage. The farm products of the Middle and Southern 
States, these States clinging in a new Union, would command the 
friendship of Europe, while the manufactures and commerce of the 
Yankee nation would excite foreign jealousy. 93 Rufus King thought 
in 1785 that the eight Northern States might quarrel decisively with 
the five Southern States over the Congressional regulation of trade; 
they could form, “and in the event must form, a sub-confederation 
remedied of all their present embarrassment.” 94 General Lincoln, 
already quoted, looked toward a division between North and South 
on a line which he did not indicate. It was with such prophecies in 
mind that the Pennsylvania Packet in 1786, when South Carolina 
gave Congress the power to regulate trade, rejoiced that the “likeli¬ 
hood of disunion arising from the great diversity of interests between 
the Northern and Southern States ... is now entirely annihilated.” 

During 1787, the year the stronger union was conceived, these 
proposals for new sectional republics were put forward most seriously. 
Madison, serving in Congress, found that a fellow member, Bingham 
of Pennsylvania, thought it would be best to divide the country into 
“several distinct federaeies—its great extent and various interests 
being incompatible with a single government.” 95 One Boston paper 

93 N C. State Records, XVII, 172-75. Spaight pointed to the Wyoming and Vt. 
disputes as having “sown the seeds of dissension which I think will not end without a 
civil war.” 

94 King, “Life and Corr.,” I, x 12-13. 

90 Rives, “Madison,” II. 187. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


604 

early this year suggested that the Bay State refuse any longer to 
let the jealousy of New York or Pennsylvania keep it bound to the 
wretched measures that had so long made America the contempt 
of Europe. Massachusetts had exerted itself to give strength to 
the national government, but to no avail. The five New England 
States, united, could have nothing to fear. Let the General Court 
recall its delegates from the shadowy Congress at Philadelphia, send 
its neighbors proposals for a new Congress speaking for New Eng¬ 
land, “and leave the rest of the Continent to pursue their own im¬ 
becile and disjointed plans.” 96 In Southern papers at the same 
time appeared a suggestion for the erection of four new nations upon 
the ruins of the Confederation. One should comprise the New Eng¬ 
land, one the Middle, one the Southern, and one the trans-Allegheny 
States. “The religion, manners, customs, imports, exports, and 
general interests of each, being then the same, no opposition arising 
from differences in these (as at present) would any longer divide 
their councils—unanimity would render us secure at home, and re¬ 
spected abroad, and promote agriculture, manufacture, and com¬ 
merce.” 97 

But these suggestions and warnings of sectional division did not go 
beyond mere words, and the words were soon forgotten by those 
who uttered them. It is significant that men in the New England 
States seldom or never thought of parting from the South unless 
they had the Middle States still firmly linked with them; while the 
South in turn never thought of setting up for itself unless it had the 
greater portion of the Middle States with it. Curiously, in the 
politics of Congress there was at one time an approach to a coalition 
between the New England members and the Southern members in 
opposition to those of the Middle States. When Yankee votes helped 
the South to obtain a decision that the nation should have its 
permanent capital on the Potomac, not the Delaware, Stephen Hig- 
ginson of Massachusetts was much pleased. “It has long been my 
wish to see the Southern and Eastern States united,” he wrote Bland 
of Virginia (January, 1784). “Their common safety and interest 
must be increased by that decision; for the Middle States have cer¬ 
tainly laid such plans, and acquired such an influence, as would 
have given them the entire direction of the national concerns. Penn- 

90 Quoted in N. Y. Advertiser, February 23, 1787. 

87 Quoted in Mass. Centinel, April 18, 1787. This was the year in which the trans¬ 
lator of Chastellux s Travels,” predicted an early division of the Union into two 
parts; footnote to page 107, ed. 1826. 


STATE QUARRELS AND STATE FRIENDSHIPS 605 

sylvania, or rather a junta of ambitious individuals in it, had con¬ 
ceived the idea of lording it over the other States. . . . They always 
exerted themselves to keep up a high degree of jealousy between the 
Southern and Eastern States.” 98 R. H. Lee was always a fast friend 
of New England, so friendly that he was repeatedly assailed at home 
for neglecting Virginia’s interests. The fact that disunion was more 
seriously talked about in 1787 than before reflects not an increased 
desire for it in itself, but as an alternative to the evils the land was 
laboring under. People were so sick of the impotency of Congress 
and the misbehavior of factions that they were ready to think of 
energetic little sectional republics as an alternative. But a far better 
solution was at hand. 

Not a statesman of importance in America wanted disunion—not 
even Hancock, certainly not even George Clinton, who has some¬ 
times been accused of the desire. The great mass of Americans in 
1781 had been educated against it. There were men a half dozen 
years later who not merely wanted the Constitution defeated, but 
believed that it might be best if the nation broke up—Jay knew 
some in the New York ratifying convention; but they were few. 
‘The union of America is the foundation stone of our independence; 
the rock on which it is built; and it is something so sacred in her 
constitution that we ought to watch every word we speak, and every 
thought we think, that we injure it not, even by mistakes”—these 
are the words, not of one of the national leaders, not of the press in 
one of the commercial cities, but of the New Jersey Gazette of April 
17, 1782. They might be paralleled every year thereafter from every 
part of the Union. After all, every great imponderable force was 
on the side of a close connection. The inhabitants had the same 
language; were mainly of British blood; their laws, customs, and 
mental habits were much the same; and they had a common history 
that was not brief. John Jay thought it worth while to remark when 
Rufus King married a daughter of the wealthy Alsop family in New 
York in 1786: “I am pleased with these intermarriages; they tend 
to assimilate the States, and to promote one of the first wishes of 
my heart, viz., to see the people of America become one nation in 
every respect.” Some small, some great, so many natural forces 
were at work that in the aggregate they were quite unconquerable. 

99 Rives, “Madison/' I, 489-90. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 

Upon the Continental Congress fell the responsibility for directing 
and leading the Revolution. It had to determine just the degree 
of activity to be given the struggle in its early phases. It alone de¬ 
cided upon the restriction of trade to injure England. It gave the 
signal in May, 1776, for the final overthrow of the old Provincial 
governments wherever they still stood. With a number of States 
yet reluctant, it declared our independence. Besides this guidance of 
policy, there fell upon it an immense burden of business detail, 
military, diplomatic, and administrative, for it had to raise troops, 
equip them, pay them, and reinforce them, through the States; to 
call upon the States for taxes to support itself, its agents abroad, and 
the departments it created; to obtain from them the munitions 
of war; and to pledge their credit for foreign loans. The second 
Continental Congress felt in especial a crushing responsibility. Yet 
when it was called to order at Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, at the 
moment when the cordon of militia was tightening about Boston, 
it hardly knew what were its powers. 

The first Continental Congress had been a consulting body, and 
something more. The Colonies were exchanging advice. They 
wished to do nothing besides showing the Ministry that the essential 
rights of the colonists would be unitedly upheld, and searching for 
a reconciliation. The directions of Pennsylvania to her delegates, 
the most comprehensive of all, instructed them “to consult together 
. . . and to form and adopt a plan for the purpose of obtaining 
redress of American grievances, ascertaining American rights upon 
the most solid and constitutional principles, and for establishing 
that union and harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies 
which is indispensably necessary to the welfare and happiness of 
both.” Several sets of instructions spoke exclusively of the restora¬ 
tion of harmony within the Empire, several exclusively of the main¬ 
tenance of American rights, and several simply of consultation for 
the public good. South Carolina empowered her delegates not only 

606 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 607 

to approve, but to “effectually prosecute” legal measures for a 
redress of grievances, while North Carolina explicitly bound her 
inhabitants to accept “any acts done by them.” There was little 
danger that this Congress would go beyond the wishes of the patriot 
majority in America. “Fifty gentlemen meeting together, all stran¬ 
gers, are not acquainted with each others’ language, ideas, views, de¬ 
signs,” wrote John Adams. “They are, therefore, jealous of each 
other, fearful, timid, skittish.” But besides the passage of spirited 
resolutions, an agreement for non-importation and non-exportation 
was voted. Although only North Carolina had agreed in advance to 
obey every Congressional measure approved by her delegation, the 
Congress unanimously resolved that its constituents were bound to 
adhere to the “association.” 1 

The second Continental Congress wielded a fuller authority. 
North Carolina renewed her declaration that acts agreed to by her 
delegates would be obligatory, in honor, upon her people. Mary¬ 
land also bound herself to execute all resolutions which Congress 
might adopt, while Georgia declared herself “heartily disposed 
zealously to enter into every measure” agreed upon. New Jersey, not 
at first, but on February 14, 1776, also agreed to abide by the resolu¬ 
tions of Congress. South Carolina again gave her delegates full 
authority to “effectually prosecute” the measures of Congress, and 
Rhode Island and New Hampshire authorized their members to 
adopt, “in behalf of this Colony,” what the former called “all 
reasonable lawful and proper measures,” and the latter simply “all 
measures.” Doubtless all the other Colonies more or less felt an 
obligation to do whatever Congress directed. 2 


I. Early Powers of Congress 

When Congress met, the fear that New York would be attacked 
was uppermost in every mind. On May 15 it recommended—not 

1 See Amer. Hist. Rev., XII, 529ff, C. H. Van Tyne, “Sovereignty in the American 

Revolution,” for a full discussion of the powers of Congress and those of the States. 
The Journals of the Cont. Congress, I, 13-24, give the instructions of the States to 
their delegates. It should be remembered that the New York Legislature refused to 
aoorove the measures of the first Continental Congress, or to send delegates to the 
second: Journals Cont. Cong., II, 16. Though Congress bound its constituents to the 
Association (I, 7sff), it issued an argumentative plea to the States to respect it and 
all its other measures (I, 62). . . ., , . ^ ~ , , 

2 In the first New Hampshire Constitution, it was provided that the Continental 
Congress might, by “instructions or directions,” prevent the execution of its provisions 
for the regular election of the upper house. In the first South Carolina Constitution, 
it was declared that “the resolutions of the Continental Congress, now of force in this 
Colony, shall so continue until altered or revoked by them Thorpe, Consts and 
Charters,” 2452, 3247. Under Georgia s first rough Constitution, all resolves of the 
Continental Congress were to have the force of law in the State. 


6 o8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


ordered—a defensive and passive policy on the part of the patriot 
authorities in that city if the Crown forces arrived. After a long 
period of hesitation—“our determinations are very slow,” wrote 
John Adams—it began taking the vigorous action meet for the 
times. Committees were appointed to deal with the fortification of 
New York, the collection of ammunition, the raising of money,.and 
the drafting of a set of army regulations, and both Franklin and 
Adams have told us how they toiled far into the night at committee 
meetings. The Provincial Convention of Massachusetts opened the 
gate to the most important step of Congress when it intimated that, 
since the troops at Boston represented several colonies and were de¬ 
fending the rights of all America, Congress should undertake their 
supervision. On June 15 Congress appointed Washington com¬ 
mander-in-chief, and provided for filling the places of two major- 
generals, eight brigadiers, an adjutant-general, and several subordi¬ 
nate officers—the skeleton of a national army organization. On 
the preceding day it had voted to raise ten companies of riflemen 
in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Before the next month 
ended it had taken two important steps in civil government—it 
provided for commissioners to superintend Indian affairs, and 
created a postoffice department under Franklin; while late in June 
it authorized the first issue of bills of credit. In short, Congress 
showed itself disposed to use a large part of the powers which 
some States explicitly, and others tacitly, had conferred upon it. 
Just how far in its undefined field would it venture to go? 3 

John Adams thought that, without any opposition of consequence 
from the revolutionary authorities in the Colonies, it might have 
acted much more vigorously and rapidly. “We ought to have had 
in our hands, a month ago, the whole legislative, executive, and 
judicial of the whole continent, and have completely modelled a 
constitution; to have arrested every friend of government on the 
continent, and held them as hostages for the poor victims in Boston; 
and then opened the door as wide as possible for peace and recon¬ 
ciliation.” This counsel was impractical, for public sentiment simply 
would not have consented to such defiance. But with autumn, and 
the receipt of the King’s letter (November 1, 1775), refusing to 
accept the olive branch offered by Congress, and fulminating against 
the “open and avowed rebellion” of America, more determined meas- 

* Journals Cont. Cong., II, 86, 89, 91, 175, 207, 208-09, etc.; American Archives, 
Series IV, Vol. II, 1819-1904 et passim. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 609 

ures were possible. Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island, truthfully 
predicted that American action would henceworth be spirited, clear, 
and decisive. Washington had already submitted a plan for raising 
twenty-six regiments, pledged to a year’s service, and had stated that 
he wished to be able to count upon at least 20,000 men. On 
November 4, Congress, sanctioning his scheme, fixed the strength 
of the Continental Army at 20,372 officers and men, and asked the 
New England States—it did not feel able to command—to allow 
him to impress supplies after fair payment; 4 while measures to pay 
and arm the troops were taken the same day. On November 25, 
warships and privateers were permitted to capture British ships. 

All these steps meant the abandonment of that defensive warfare 
with which Congress had declared the previous spring it would con¬ 
tent itself. “We have hitherto conducted half a war,” wrote John 
Adams in March, 1776; “. . . for the future, we are likely to wage 
three quarters of a war.” But to go on to unrestricted warfare 
would require independence, and here Congress paused to await a 
fairly explicit assurance of the consent of the States. 

At the opening of 1776 Massachusetts had given her delegates to 
understand that she was ready for independence, and it was known 
that the other New England Colonies supported this position. North 
Carolina on April 12 conferred upon her delegates the power to 
vote for independence and foreign alliances, and on May 15 the 
Provincial Convention of Virginia unanimously directed her dele¬ 
gates to propose independence in Congress. The Congressional reso¬ 
lution of May 10, recommending the establishment of new State 
governments, and the political revolution which followed in Penn¬ 
sylvania ten days later, brought the greatest Middle Colony into 
line. New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, however, had in¬ 
structed their delegates to oppose independence, and a revocation 
of these instructions had to be obtained; Samuel Chase in Maryland, 
and Jonathan D. Sergeant in New Jersey, with assistance from 
others, succeeded in this, though New Jersey acquiesced only at the 
last moment. The only Colonies which by July 4th had not 
assented to independence, or given evidence that they were ready 
for it, were New York and Delaware. Feeling in the former Prov¬ 
ince was so uncertain that the delegates simply withdrew from the 

* For John Adams’s opinions, see “Works,” II, 411; for the action of Congress, 
Journals, IV, 320 ff. See Hamilton upon Congress s early powers, Works, I, 204. 


6io THE AMERICAN STATES 

acts leading up to the drafting of the Declaration; in the latter, as 
the time came for the final vote, Caesar Rodney was known to be 
laboring successfully. 6 

Congress, it will thus be seen, used its powers in advancing the 
revolt from stage to stage so cautiously that no Colony could object 
to its acts. The Provincial instructions were in general so loose 
or liberal that, short of a premature declaration of independence, 
they allowed Congress entire freedom of action. Thus Massachusetts, 
instructing her delegation for the critical year 1776, declared it 
“fully empowered, with the delegates from the other American 
Colonies, to concert, direct, and order such further measures as 
shall to them appear best calculated for the establishment of right 
and liberty to the American Colonies upon a basis permanent and 
secure, against the power and art of the British administration.” 
The real curbs upon Congress were the natural caution and respon¬ 
sibility of the delegates, and their knowledge that if they went too 
fast for the people, they would defeat their own ends. The country 
was like a squadron of thirteen ships, wrote John Adams; “the 
fleetest sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest.” It has been 
said that if no States objected to any important act of Congress, 
at least seven—Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New 
Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—tried to show their inde¬ 
pendent authority by passing resolutions to ratify the Declaration, 
but they may have done this simply for emphasis. Hamilton in 
1784 wrote that New York’s resolution was a non-essential affir¬ 
mation, which did not pretend to authenticate the act. 

The only protests against any early measures of Congress relate 
to trifling matters. The history of Maryland offers the most promi¬ 
nent examples. When Congress wished in 1776 to arrest the royal 
Governor, Eden, by its direct agents, Maryland’s authorities showed 
resentment, and the Council of Safety refused to let him be seized. 
In the same year her Provincial Congress transmitted a demand to 
the Continental Congress that it pass an ordinance cutting off its 

5 For preliminaries to the Declaration, see Elliot, Debates, I, 42ff. It was said 
during the Congressional discussion of independence that “if the delegates of any 
particular Colony had no power to declare such Colony independent, certain they were 
the others could not declare it for them, the Colonies being as yet perfectly inde¬ 
pendent of each other.” If independence were declared before the Middle Colonies 
authorized it, such Colonies “might secede from the Union.” (Journals Cont. Cong., 
VI, 1088 ) For the letter of the New York delegates dated July 2, asking the 
Provincial Congress “whether we are to consider our Colony bound by the vote 
of the majority in favor of independency,” see Journal N. Y. Prov. Cong., II, 236; 
Burnett, “Letters of Members of the Continental Congress,” I, 524. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 611 


members from other office. This was aimed primarily at John 
Adams, who had accepted the position of chief justice of the new 
superior court of Massachusetts, and it was an unworthy aspersion 
upon the motives of the advocates of independence. Later, in April, 
1777, the Council of Safety sharply reprimanded Captain Nicholson 
of the Continental frigate Virginia for impressing Maryland citizens 
into the naval service, and ordered their immediate release. Nichol¬ 
son was rash enough to pen a defiant reply, saying that Congress 
would support him, and he cared naught for “the threats of any coun¬ 
cil of Maryland.” An emphatic remonstrance was thereupon for¬ 
warded to Congress by the Maryland authorities, who pointed out 
that Nicholson’s acts were in violation of the State Constitution, and 
could not be tolerated. Congress of course disclaimed the acts of 
the captain, and suspended him from his command until he offered 
the humble apology which the Governor of Maryland demanded. 
In 1778 Maryland’s Legislature again asserted itself in opposition to 
a Congressional measure. When “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, in pursuit 
of instructions from the Board of War, began seizing horses for his 
dragoons in Maryland, although he paid for them upon a generous 
appraisal, the Assembly forbade all such levies, and sent its order, to¬ 
gether with a copy of Lee’s instructions, to Congress. 6 

In trying to give strength to the army, and to make it a truly 
national force, Congress was always battling with the ignorance 
and jealousy of the States. Not only did the latter, proud of their 
separate militias, wish them maintained, but narrow-minded leaders 
feared that State liberties would be trenched upon if Congress ob¬ 
tained control of a large, well-drilled force bound to serve for a long 
term. A large part of the population preferred the light yoke of 
the States in military service to the strict discipline which the Con¬ 
tinental generals would impose. If we were to take from Wash¬ 
ington’s writings those letters in which he complains of the evil 
results of the compromises between Congress and the States in 
military affairs, we should reduce his correspondence during the 
Revolution by almost a fourth; and beyond doubt, if he had pos- 


a b W Bond. “State Govt, in Md.Ch. II. There was also a slight clash regard¬ 
ing police powers with the State of Delaware in .1778. Congress ordered the military 
to secure and send to a safe place severa Tories, and this offended the Delaware 
authorities, who granted a habeas corpus for their discharge. In answer. Congress 
stated that it had been told that a majority of the people of Kent and Sussex Counties, 
and some of those of Newcastle, were disaffected, and that its duty was to take pre- 
cautionT for the general welfare, and that it had therefore exercised similar powers 
in other States. 


6 l2 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

sessed a Continental Line of 20,000 men, well-trained, well-officered, 
and serving for the whole conflict, the war would have ended years 
before it did. 

The enrollment of the Continental army of 20,000 authorized in 
the fall of 1775 proceeded slowly and discouragingly. Washington 
was disgusted: “Such dearth of public spirit and such want of 
virtue; such stockjobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain 
advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military 
arrangements, I never saw before, and I pray God’s mercy that I 
may never see it again.” By the beginning of December hardly 
more than 4,000 had enlisted, and when the year ended the total 
was only 9,650, of whom many were not in camp. The States had 
to be called upon to fill the gap, and Washington asked Massa¬ 
chusetts and New Hampshire to furnish 5,000 militia for temporary 
service. In the course of the spring the depleted army filled up, as 
it always did throughout the war when the winter snows melted 
away, till in March, 1776, it had become 15,000 strong; but the tem¬ 
porary service of some New England militia had to be requested that 
month for the attack on Dorchester Heights. 

During the summer of 1776 the exigencies of the conflict, and the 
lack of any soldiers pledged for even a full year, caused Congress to 
accede to Washington’s view of the desirability of longer terms of 
enlistment. On September 16 it resolved to enlist eighty-eight bat¬ 
talions, comprising 66,000 men, for the duration of the conflict. Each 
State was required to furnish a certain quota of troops, Massachu¬ 
setts and Virginia leading with fifteen battalions apiece, and each 
was to furnish its men with arms and ammunition, but the pay and 
support of the soldiers in the field was to be a Continental charge. 
Land grants were promised the recruits who thus enlisted for the 
war. It was high time that something was being done. When 
Howe arrived off New York in the week that independence was de¬ 
clared, Washington’s army numbered only 9,000 men, of whom 2,000 
carried no arms, and more than 3,000 had weapons scarcely fit for 
use. Although during the next three months strenuous efforts were 
made to bring militiamen and others into the ranks, when at the end 
of August the American forces attained their greatest strength under 
a single commander in the whole war, the troops fit for duty num¬ 
bered only about 14,000. Some 6,000 more were sick or otherwise 
incapacitated. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 613 

Washington’s losses were heavy in the battles of the late summer 
about New York, nearly 3,000 men being captured at Fort Wash¬ 
ington alone, while New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware sent 
only half the 5,000 reinforcements expected. During his retreat upon 
Philadelphia his army dwindled to less than 5,000, and had Howe 
shown due enterprise, this small force could have been scattered to 
the winds. Congress, in desperation, made another effort. On De¬ 
cember 27, it authorized the increase of Washington’s army by 12,000 
infantry, 3,000 light horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps 
of engineers, and required all enlistments for the Continental Line to 
be for three years or during the war. Above all, it gave Washing¬ 
ton practically dictatorial powers over the Continental army for 
the next six months, authorizing him to displace any officer of lower 
rank than a brigadier, to fill vacancies, and to commandeer supplies 
at will. 7 But even after the victories of Trenton and Princeton, 
recruiting for the Continental forces continued very slow. 

The years 1776 and 1777 thus witnessed, on the part of respon¬ 
sible men, a steady loss of confidence in the State militias; a steadily 
increasing conviction that the nation’s main reliance must be upon 
a long-term Continental force; and an increasing perplexity as to 
the means of procuring it. During 1777 Congress continued exhort¬ 
ing the States, through its resolutions, to forward their due quotas of 
men for the Continental army, but without much effect; and fol¬ 
lowing a conference between a Congressional committee and Wash¬ 
ington, conscription was finally resorted to. That is, a resolution 
was passed requesting the States “forthwith to fill up by drafts, from 
their militia or in any other way that shall be effectual, their respec¬ 
tive battalions of Continental troops.” 8 But Congress had of course 
no power to enforce this demand, and despite the repeated exhor¬ 
tations of Washington, despite the wave of hope that followed Sara¬ 
toga, and despite the French alliance, the response was weaker than 
Congress hoped it would be. Just after the news of the French 
alliance, in the late spring of 1778, Washington’s army outside Phil¬ 
adelphia consisted of only 13,000 men. At the same date in 1779, 
the whole American force north of the Potomac aggregated but 
16,000, part of which was in New England, part in the Highlands, 

7 Journals Cont. Cong., VI, 1045; Washington in 1779 wrote that America had 
never at one time had 26,000 men in the field. “Writings,” VI, 161. But see John 
Marshall’s “Washington,” II, 469. 

*ldem } X, 200. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


614 

and part lower down on the Hudson. Had Massachusetts and Vir¬ 
ginia each furnished the fifteen battalions assigned them under the 
quota of the year of independence, and had no other State sent 
forward a man, the army would have numbered 22,500. 

Thenceforth to the end of the war, military affairs continued upon 
this wretched basis. Every man of sense saw that the Continental 
dependence upon State activity or inactivity was a deplorable make¬ 
shift. Congress had its own recruiting officers, and in 1779 it 
offered the States a $200 bounty for each recruit; but the one power 
indispensable to it, that of drafting men into the Continental ranks, 
instead of merely recommending State drafts, it did not have. Wash¬ 
ington wrote a year before Yorktown, in intense bitterness, that if 
he had possessed a permanent, responsible, and truly national army 
from the outset, “we should not have been for the greater part of 
the war inferior to the enemy, indebted for our safety to their in¬ 
activity, enduring frequently the mortification of seeing inviting 
opportunities to ruin them pass unimproved for want of a force which 
the country was completely able to afford, and of seeing the country 
ravaged, our towns burnt, the inhabitants plundered, abused, mur¬ 
dered, from the same cause.” The militia to the end were totally 
undependable. On rare occasions they fought well, but usually very 
ill. They hurried to Gates’s standard when Burgoyne invaded from 
the north, and they almost crushed Washington’s spirit when, fighting 
at Brandywine and Germantown to save Philadelphia, he found them 
refusing to come to his aid. They would pack their effects, includ¬ 
ing ammunition and supplies badly needed by the army, and leave 
for home on the least excuse—to see to their crops, to visit their 
families, or to escape the rigors of winter. To them it was a kind 
of sacrilege to let nature’s bounty in grain or fruit go ungarnered 
while they were wasting their time in the army. Washington gave 
the militia credit for some usefulness, as in light parties for forest 
skirmishing, but he solemnly declared that he was never “witness to a 
single instance that can countenance an opinion of militia or raw 
troops being fit for the real business of fighting.” Their disgraceful 
conduct at Camden, where they fled on the first fire, was perhaps 
the sharpest proof of the truth of Washington’s opinion. 9 

Washington placed his finger upon the salient need of the army 
when he wrote that “every matter which relates to it should be 

9 Writings, VIII, 502ft. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 615 

under the immediate direction and providence of Congress.” He did 
not know sometimes, he said, whether he was commanding one 
army, or thirteen armies allied for the common defense. 10 While 
one State yielded full obedience to Congressional requests, another 
gave partial and grudging consent, and a third flatly refused, military 
affairs could not prosper. “The willing States are almost ruined by 
their exertions; distrust and jealousy succeeds to it. Hence proceed 
neglect and ill-timed compliances, one State waiting to see what an¬ 
other will do.” 11 Many of the States were almost inert until threat¬ 
ened with invasion, when their populations would respond with a 
spasmodic and short-lived effort, and then return to inertia. Not 
only military weakness and defeat, but much of the derangement of 
the national finances, sprang from this condition. Two sets of men 
had to be paid and fed, the new levies coming in and the old levies 
going out; many raw troops had to employed where a compara¬ 
tively few seasoned veterans would have sufficed; the cost of boun¬ 
ties and recruiting constantly rose; and the mere prolongation of the 
war spelt possible ruin. The commander also suffered much from 
incompetent officers. “Besides the inequality of provision already 
mentioned,” he hence complained, “all the confusion we have 
experienced by irregular appointments and promotions has chiefly 
originated” in the division of authority. 12 

Had Congress at the outset refused to recognize the State militia 
or other State troops, and tried to institute a Continental draft to 
force men into the Continental army, we may be sure that it would 
have met the angriest and most stubborn opposition. The State 
authorities were too jealous of the means of self-defense to sur¬ 
render them into Continental hands, and too confident of their own 
abilities in war to see any propriety in doing so. But Congress never 
even thought of such an attempt. Many of its members, feeling 
no sympathy with Washington’s efforts to destroy all State distinc¬ 
tions in the army and make it Continental and nothing else, were 
willing to send out one futile requisition after another to the States, 
but any hint of more determined measures aroused their resentment. 
In the fall of 1780, when a Congressional committee returned to 
Philadelphia strongly impressed with Washington’s views, the com¬ 
mitteemen found themselves unpopular in certain Congressional 

10 Writings, IX, 63ft. 

11 Idem, IX, 1 7 3ff. 

12 Idem, VIII, 386ff. 



6 i6 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


circles. They were charged with being “too strongly tinctured with 
the army principles” and Washington felt constrained to write a 
letter to a Congressman deploring the distrust thus exhibited. The 
commander at this time wished a peremptory draft, but it was 
impossible to get it. He noted in his diary the following May, not 
six months before Yorktown, that scarcely a single State had one 
eighth of its quota in the field . 13 

Dependence upon the States was even more complete as regarded 
supplies. Shipments of food were constantly required for the State 
troops and Continental Line, and the correspondence between Con¬ 
gressional agents, especially the Commissary-General, and the States, 
would fill volumes. Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, came to the 
assistance of the army larder at several critical moments, and in 
the terrible midwinter of Valley Forge, Governor Henry of Virginia, 
solicited by a Congressional committee under Francis Lightfoot Lee, 
took immediate measures to forward beef, pork, salt, and clothing . 14 
Yet Congress at this time could not prevent the Pennsylvania farm¬ 
ers from carrying their provisions into Philadelphia for British 
gold, so much more valuable than Continental paper. Upon one 
excuse or another—and the mere difficulties of transportation were 
sometimes a good excuse—the States were always becoming delin¬ 
quent in their provision of supplies. Washington and Congress were 
assiduous in requesting them to set aside stores of salt meat par¬ 
ticularly, yet there was never a period of three months in which 
the command did not have to complain of the shortage of provisions. 
Repeatedly Washington had not more than a day’s provender in 
camp, and once he had to draw from West Point some of the stores 
kept there to enable it to withstand a siege . 15 


“ Nathanael Greene wrote July 4, 1780, that Congress was dreaming as usual, the 
majority of members being occupied with penny-hapenny politics. The Congressional 
committee on cooperation with the army command, consisting of Schuyler Peabody 
and Mathews, “have almost all got sick; and we are almost sick of them all except 
Schuyler. The other two dare not do what they know to be right. Popularity is 
the bane of American liberty, and if a different policy is not pursued hereafter ten 
to one it proves our ruin.” Corr. and Journals of S. B. Webb, II, 268-60; Washing¬ 
ton, “Writings,” VIII, 461-64. 6 

u Governor Henry bitterly reproached Congress for its neglect, saying that if national 
officers had exerted themselves, they might have had “a great abundance of provisions” 
from Virginia. Henry, “Henry,” I, Ch. 22. 

16 Hamilton wrote Duane, September 3, 1780, that the States ought to have nothing 
to do with the army, the entire mustering and disposition of which should belong 
to Congress. The army was the cement of the Union, he said, and it should be the 
policy of Congress to destroy all State attachments in it. To this end. Congress ought 
to make all appointments and promotions. Yet at that time some parts of the army, 
Hamilton thought, would obey their States in opposition to Congress. The influence 
of Washington alone, if anything, could prevent this. To supply the army by State 
purchases was in two ways a bad plan. Each State would make its own ease a 
primary object the supply of the army a secondary one; while much waste and em¬ 
bezzlement would occur. Works, I, 203ff. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 617 

The interest of Congress in the cost of supplies led inevitably to 
its encouragement of the State regulation of prices. At first the 
States embarked independently upon this treacherous field. New 
England delegates, at a conference held in Providence from Christ¬ 
mas Day, 1776, to January 2, 1777, to discuss defense, paper money, 
and prices, agreed upon a plan for regulating by law the charges 
for produce, manufactures, imported goods, and labor. 16 Though 
the merchants raised a clamor of protest, the New England Legis¬ 
latures, supported by public sentiment, duly enacted the plan. Dur¬ 
ing the second month of 1777 the proceedings of the Providence con¬ 
ference were submitted to Congress, which not only approved the 
scheme, but advised that the Middle and Southern States each hold 
conventions for drawing up similar plans. The lower South did not 
heed the injunction, but delegates from the Middle States, with 
Virginia, met at Yorktown on March 26, 1777, and formulated a 
scale of prices. Sagacious men of course knew that this was folly, 
and the event soon proved it so. The price-fixing laws passed in the 
various States not only failed utterly, but increased the evil they 
were meant to diminish. Wherever they were partly enforced by 
local committees or constables, they caused great distress among 
shippers and retailers, to the ultimate injury of the consumers; 
but they were seldom enforced. Men continued to sell, whether 
covertly or overtly, at prices in excess of those legalized, and charged 
an additional profit as insurance to cover the risk they ran. 17 

When at the close of July, 1777, another convention was held at 
Springfield, including representatives of New York as well as of 
New England, it was determined to recommend the repeal of all 
price-fixing laws, and the substitution of statutes against forestalling 
and engrossing—that is, against speculative hoarding. John Adams 
set it down as his earnest opinion in September, 1777, that the 
Massachusetts law for controlling prices, if not repealed, would 
ruin the State and introduce civil war. Congress, taking up the 
subject in November, indicated a certain lingering confidence in price¬ 
fixing, for it proposed that three more conventions should meet 
early in 1778, and arrange new scales of prices for legalization by 
the State Legislatures. 18 One convention, at New Haven, was to 

18 Journals Cont. Cong., VII, 124. 

17 Lecky, “Amer. Rev/’ (Woodburn ed.), 290; Bolles, “Financial Hist. U. S.,” I, 
* 58 - 73 . 

“Journals Cont. Cong., IX, 956-57. 



6 i8 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


represent the eight northern States, one at Fredericksburg was to 
represent Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and one in 
Charleston the two remaining members of the Union. Congress re¬ 
vealed one motive for this touching confidence when it asked the 
States to authorize the Continental commissary-officers to seize the 
goods of hoarders and speculators at the legalized prices. 

A little later, in the last days of 1777, the army’s need of cloth¬ 
ing was so dire that it compelled Congress to pursue this last recom¬ 
mendation a good deal further. The States were asked to seize all 
the suitable woolens, stockings, blankets, hats, shoes, and other 
apparel in the hands of the merchants, giving receipts at the fixed 
prices for them and punishing all who tried to resist; while they 
were requested, as before, to grant the Commissary Department 
authority to take over foodstuffs collected by speculators. A Con¬ 
gressional agent in Boston, attempting to conclude a heavy purchase 
of clothing, had a little earlier been not only asked a price ten to 
eighteen times the normal valuation of the goods, but made to ac¬ 
cept insults to the Congressional credit. Congress was well aware 
of the failure of State efforts to enforce price-fixing laws, and it 
recommended that to give them greater force, the number of re¬ 
tailers be limited, and each retailer be licensed under a bond to 
obey the regulatory legislation; making these drastic proposals, how¬ 
ever, only reluctantly. “Unhappy the case of America!” exclaimed 
Congress; “laws unworthy the character of infant republics are 
become necessary to supply the defect of public virtue, and to 
correct the vices of some of her sons. . . 19 

One of the three sectional price-fixing conventions recommended 
by Congress actually met at New Haven in January, 1778, and agreed 
upon a scale of remuneration to be allowed by agents of the Com¬ 
missary Department for food and clothing seized by the army. Sev¬ 
eral States tried to make these prices standard for the general public 
by law, but such efforts were as completely abortive as all which 
had preceded them. In the other sections no heed was paid to the 
Congressional requests. The price of commodities continued to 
advance sharply, and Congress indignantly passed a resolve on 
November 19, 1779, that this was in large part due to the arts 
of unprincipled and disaffected loyalists. Setting forth the injustice 
of profiteering, and the difficulties which it threw in the way of an 

19 Journals Cont. Cong., IX, 1043-47. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 619 

accurate drafting of fiscal estimates, Congress recommended that 
the States refuse to permit any charges “for articles of domestic 
produce, farming and common labor, the wages of tradesmen and 
mechanics, water and land carriage,” which exceeded twentyfold the 
prices current throughout the year 1774. Imported commodities 
were to be rated in due proportion, but military stores were to be 
exempted from the price-fixing laws. Another meeting of northern 
representatives had meanwhile been held in October, and Congress 
approved its proposed measures of economic regulation. 

One instrument for State control of the cost of living lay in the 
passage of internal embargo laws, 20 by which a commonwealth pos¬ 
sessing a large supply of the essentials of life sought to keep them for 
itself. Such laws proved a sore embarrassment to useful commerce, 
and frequently wrought hardship to large populations. 

Congress was told early in 1779 that the people of Massachusetts 
and Rhode Island were in distress for lack of foodstuffs, for ex¬ 
ample; the Assembly of the latter State reporting that “especially 
those who have come off from the island of Rhode Island [in con¬ 
sequence of the British seizure of Newport] must inevitably perish 
unless they are speedily supplied with the necessities of life.” The 
Assembly asked Congress to request of New York and Connecticut 
a relaxation of their embargoes on provisions “so far as respected the 
supply of Rhode Islanders by land,” which Congress did. But 
Congress also learned that no full relief could be obtained by the 
two States unless they also obtained shipments from Maryland, 
Virginia, and the Carolinas. Deeming that a private trade between 
the citizens of New England and of the South might be ineffective 
or injurious, it therefore requested the Governors of Maryland, 
Virginia, and South Carolina to permit the Governors of Massachu¬ 
setts and Rhode Island to purchase and export, under proper 
regulation, such quantities of grain and flour as they might agree to 
be expedient. In April, Massachusetts having entrusted the pur¬ 
chase of the needed provisions to her Board of War, Congress asked 
the Middle States and Virginia to permit the free passage over their 
respective boundaries of whatever stores the Board acquired. In 
October, 1780, it became necessary for Congress to facilitate the 
movement of food the other way: it asked Maryland to let as much 

20 The New York Council of Revision pointed out the perils of this kind of legisla¬ 
tion in the spring of 1781; it objected that it would provoke retaliatory embargoes, and 
encourage smugglers. Assembly Journals, March 10, 1781. 


620 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


bread, flour, and wheat be exported to Virginia as the latter State 
needed for its public supply. 21 

It is hard for Americans today to comprehend the situation which 
thus existed when the national government had only the rudiments 
of a national army, and was compelled to cajole and exhort thirteen 
State governments controlling thirteen independent armies. It is 
hard for them to appreciate the situation when the national govern¬ 
ment had to plead with the States to limit the prices of the stores 
which its commissaries were purchasing in open market for the 
army. But it is hardest of all to conceive of the national govern¬ 
ment compelled thus to deal with domestic commerce. A simple 
matter of interstate trade had to be arranged as if it were inter¬ 
course among wholly independent nations. 

Some States laid embargoes of their own volition—Massachusetts, 
for example, did so, and led New Hampshire, in a retaliatory mood, 
to follow suit. But for most States the embargo acts were initiated 
by Congress. It incorrectly believed that the embargoes were an 
absolute necessity, for it traced the poverty of the army to exports, 
when it was really due to imperfect transportation and interrupted 
trade. It also knew that the British captured some food ships and 
thus supplied themselves. Quite correctly, it believed that if an 
embargo was to be laid at all, it should be laid by Congressional 
mandate. This was because of “the distance of many States from 
Congress; the different periods of assembling their Legislatures; 
their remoteness in some instances from information; the possibility 
of one or a few States not seeing, or being unwilling to yield to the 
necessities of restraint, however obvious to the General Council; and 
the danger that, without the cooperation of all, the good end of the 
embargo might be totally frustrated.” 

Congress thus took one of its boldest steps in dealing with the 
States when on June 8, 1778, it passed a resolution forbidding the 
shipment from any State, between June 10 and November 15, of 
certain enumerated articles. 22 This measure met general State 
approbation, and the Continental legislators admitted that it was 
well enforced. From time to time the national legislature renewed 
the embargo. In August, 1779, it recommended that the States which 
had acts enforcing the embargo should continue them until January 
1, 1780, and that they should extend all partial embargo acts to cover 

21 Journals Cont. Cong., XV, 1137. 

22 Idem, XI, 569, 578 ff. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 621 

every kind of foodstuff. 23 Later it called for a further extension of 
the time of the embargo. It was made plain in 1779 that Congress 
wished every State to confiscate articles imported into it in defiance 
of the laws of the State of origin; and it wished that whenever it 
became necessary to modify an embargo law with respect to com¬ 
modities needed by another State, then the purchase of such 
commodities should be placed in the hands of Continental rather 
than State officers. 

Enforcement was not easy, for even where the States tried loyally 
to maintain the embargo, smuggling occurred. At one time Congress 
found it necessary to take sharp action to prevent a violation of 
what it considered the implicit agreement among the States. In 
the autumn of 1779 it was learned that several vessels lay off the 
Delaware shore in the Delaware River, loaded with provisions for 
shipment. This was although the need for a full domestic supply 
of food was believed urgent, although Washington had declared 
that the army was hungry and that storehouses should be filled 
while the roads remained good, and although Delaware had poorly 
complied with the pending requisitions for State supplies. The 
Executive Council of Pennsylvania complained of the unfairness of 
letting Delaware evade the embargo, especially since much of the 
cargoes came originally from Pennsylvania; and the Governor of 
Maryland angrily asserted that if’ the Delaware were opened for 
exportation, he would open the Chesapeake also. Congress was 
aroused. 24 Three measures were hurriedly laid before it: one to 
order the Board of Admiralty to seize all vessels lying in the Dela¬ 
ware ready to violate the embargo, one to call on Delaware to main¬ 
tain the embargo herself, and one requesting Congress to let the 
embargo in all the States be lifted as soon as possible. 

II. The Articles of Confederation 

So long as the nation had no written organic law, the undefined 
powers of Congress might be regarded as very broad. As the su¬ 
preme revolutionary body, whose authority the patriots accepted 
without question early in the struggle, it might exercise many at¬ 
tributes of sovereignty which any definite federative constitution 

23 Idem, XIV, 986-87. . 

34 See Rives, “Madison,” I, 304, for Madison’s letter to Jefferson treating this 
as evidence of the necessity of “arming Congress with coercive powers.” 


622 THE AMERICAN STATES 

would be certain to take from it. 25 There were hence friends of a 
strong Continental government who were reluctant to bind the Con¬ 
tinental Congress by hard and fast constitutional rules, thinking 
them in part unnecessary and in part an evil. They could plead the 
fact that the British had no written Constitution, being governed by 
precedent and statutory law. Samuel Chase wrote R. H. Lee just 
after the Declaration that “we do not all see the importance, nay, 
the necessity, of a Confederacy.” 26 But the education of the Amer¬ 
ican people had made them unwilling to assent to this view. They 
had grown used to written organic laws guaranteeing, defining, and 
limiting the powers of their colonial governments, and had has¬ 
tened to write State Constitutions. Long before independence, some 
of the American leaders were proposing an instrument to make ex¬ 
plicit the governance of America within the Empire. 

Jefferson implied a rough plan for the future in his “Summary 
View,” which he wrote for the Provincial Convention at Williams¬ 
burg in August, 1774, and which was extensively circulated in both 
England and America. The Colonies, under the British aegis, were 
to form an association of practically self-governing commonwealths, 
united to each other through the Crown, and this executive, there 
being no general Congress or legislature, was to veto any laws 
which would bring one Colony into friction with another. Galloway 
laid before the first Continental Congress a much more detailed 
plan. 27 He wished to see a British-American Legislature established, 
to consist of a President-General, appointed by the King, and a 
Grand Council, chosen by the Provincial Legislatures once every 
three years. The Grand Council was to meet annually, elect its own 
Speaker, and to have all the privileges in America that the House 
of Commons had in England. The President-General was to possess 
an absolute veto, and, with the advice and consent of the Grand 
Council, was to exercise all the administrative powers touching 
more than one Province. Continental laws, as distinguished from 
Provincial laws, might originate in the British Parliament, and must 
in any event be approved by it. This plan found some advocates, 
but was finally erased from the minutes of the Continental Congress. 

25 Thus Congress recommended the erection of independent State governments, when 
Duane and others protested it had no such power; and later it called upon the State 
Legislatures to §ive their Governors extraordinary emergency powers. 

2a Amer. Archives, Series V, Vol. I, 672. But Chase himself ardently believed in 
one. Without it, he said, “we shall remain weak, distracted, and divided in our 
councils; our strength will decrease. . . 

27 Journals, I, 49#. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 623 

With the probability of independence in his mind, Franklin also 
offered a detailed plan for a Continental Constitution to Congress in 
July, 1775, 28 but did not press it against the opposition of Dickinson 
and other conservatives. He proposed that the Colonies, each re¬ 
taining internal independence, should form a close league or associ¬ 
ation of friendship for the conduct of their external relations. There 
should be a Congress, elected annually by the Colonies according 
to the able-bodied males—the adult polls—of each, which should 
defend the Colonies, send ambassadors, enter into alliances, settle 
all disputes between Colonies, plant new Colonies, control the general 
commerce of the nation, direct the army, and regulate the monetary 
affairs and the postoffice. The executive authority was to be vested 
in a Council of twelve, elected by Congress for terms of three years, 
one-third the membership changing annually. This Council was to 
prepare business for the consideration of Congress, and in the Con¬ 
gressional recesses was to execute its orders and fill all vacant offices 
pro tempore. Ireland, Canada, the West Indies, Bermuda, Nova 
Scotia, and Florida were to be invited to join the American con¬ 
federacy; and the union was to endure until the British had ceased 
their oppressions and had made reparation to the colonies. Though 
this plan was referred to a committee, Congress never acted upon 
it. Roger Sherman made an effort to draft a scheme for a con¬ 
federation at about the same time. 29 

It is true that Congress had less power after the drafting of the 
Articles of Confederation than before. But it is certain that its 
powers would have dwindled anyway as the war dragged on, and as 
the first flush of enthusiasm passed away. When there was no 
authority that it could confidently claim, there were always men who 
would question its right to almost any authority. After the second 
Congress the instructions to delegates show that the States no longer 
felt generally bound to obey every act to which their delegates 
assented. The notes of debate made by Burke of North Carolina 
early in 1777 show how flatly Congressional powers were denied: 

Maryland and Pennsylvania were very solicitous to procure a vote of Congress, 
approving a meeting lately held by committees appointed by the four New England 
governments, to the end that this approbation might imply a right to disapprove. It 
occasioned very long and interesting debates. At length the general opinion was 
that Congress had necessarily a right to inquire into the cause of any meeting, and to 
require to know what was transacted at any such meetings, and also to require an 
explanation of anything that was dubious, and satisfaction for anything that was 

28 Idem, II, 195. 

28 Adams, “Works,” III, 220. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


624 

alarming to the whole, or any one of the States; that this right necessarily existed 
in their power to take care each for his respective State that no injury happened to 
her from without. But that Congress had no right to prohibit meetings, or censure 
them if the transactions in them were not injurious to others. The delegate of 
North Carolina refused to say what his State could not do, declaring he thought she 
could do everything which she had not precluded herself from by plain and express 
declaration. . . . The question put, the approbation was denied, many voting against 
it lest its ambiguity should create further disputes; of this number was North 
Carolina. 30 

The Articles were highly essential, for, as Marshall said later, the 
Confederation preserved the idea of union until national wisdom 
adopted a more efficient system. 31 He believed that if a permanent 
union had not been agreed upon before peace was made, it was likely 
that the different parts would have fallen asunder after 1781. The 
pity was that the Articles were not better—that a vigorous national 
government such as Franklin sketched in 1775 was not pushed 
through immediately after the Declaration. Then, and then only, 
was State individualism sufficiently melted in the fire of national 
patriotism to yield to it. It is possible that under a shrewd and 
energetic leadership, Congress before the end of 1776 might have 
set up a government that would have shortened the war, and pre¬ 
vented many of the evils that followed it; but Congress was too 
little a national body, and too much a mere assemblage of ambassa¬ 
dors from States that regarded themselves almost as sovereign 
nations, to do this. The leadership was lacking also. Even John 
Adams seems to have had no early or consistent conviction of the 
need for a powerful Continental authority. He wrote in January, 
1776, that “We have heard much of a continental constitution; I 
see no occasion for any but a Congress. Let that be made an equal 
and fair representation of the Colonies; and let its authority be 
confined to three cases,—war, trade, and controversies between colony 
and colony.” 82 Yet no one deplored more than John Adams the 
> weakness of the Articles, and he made a curious prophecy that 
within ten years the Confederation would be found inadequate, 
and would dissolve. 

The chief issues which arose in debating and drafting the Articles 
of Confederation— this process extended from June n, 1776, to 
November 15, 1777, when the Articles were sent to the States for 
ratification—may be briefly summarized. The first important dis¬ 
pute arose over the drafting committee’s plan to apportion taxes 

80 N. C. Col. Records, 389; Journals Cont. Cong., VII, 112. 

81 Marshall’s “Washington,” I, second ed., 1836, 429-30. 

82 Adams wrote Gates that each Colony should establish its own government, and then 
a league should be formed between all; “Works,” I, 207. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 625 

according to the gross number of inhabitants, the Southern States 
declaiming against the enumeration of slaves in rating the State 
quotas. Chase asserted that slaves were property, not population. 
Lynch of South Carolina also compared them with land, or dumb 
animals. But John Adams argued that slaves, like freemen, pro¬ 
duced wealth, and should be reckoned when preparing an index 
of the wealth of the country, while Wilson wished to tax slaves in 
order to discourage slavery. A second disagreement arose over the 
proposal to grant each State one vote, and one only, in Congress. 
Franklin shared Adams’s indignation over this proposal, but men 
from the small States feared that the great ones would overawe and 
oppress them. Other delegates from the lesser commonwealths agreed 
with him in emphasizing the fact that the union was to be federal, 
not an organic union like that of England and Scotland, and that it 
was therefore right for each State to have just one vote. It is impos¬ 
sible to read the debates without realizing how much the mutual 
jealousies of the States contributed to render them jealous of a 
powerful central authority. 

This realization becomes even clearer in studying the debates 
upon two other questions. The proposal to give Congress the power 
of regulating Indian affairs and trade was passionately opposed by 
South Carolina. Georgia pointed out that if the Indian trade were 
not carefully administered, friction and warfare always arose, and 
that her long stretch of unprotected frontier would suffer the most. 
But South Carolina, sheltered behind Georgia and North Carolina, 
found the unfettered trade highly profitable, and Rutledge and 
Lynch voiced a demand that Indian affairs be let alone. It was evi¬ 
dent that State weakness and rivalry constituted the chief cause 
of the general uncertainty of Indian affairs; if they had a united 
nation to deal with, neither the Indians nor the lawless frontiersmen 
would be eager to precipitate hostilities. But South Carolina stood 
out as long as possible, and when the desired clause was inserted, it 
was with a proviso that the legislative right of any State within 
its own limits be not infringed or violated. The discussion of the 
power which Congress ought to have over State boundaries, again, 
brought forth an alignment between those States which had claims 
to western lands, and those which had none. 

The Articles which thus became the law of the land on March 1, 
1781, have been the target of great abuse, and long before they 


626 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


were fully ratified shrewd men saw their inadequacy; but it was the 
general view that they made a sound constitution. A union for com¬ 
mon defense and general welfare was provided. Each State remained 
sovereign and independent, and retained every right not expressly 
ceded by the Articles to the general government—thus establishing 
a principle of the first importance. The States were annually to 
appoint from two to seven delegates to Congress and each State 
was to have one vote. Charges for government arid defense were to 
be defrayed from a common treasury, to which the States were to 
contribute in proportion to the value of their surveyed land and im¬ 
provements. To Congress was confided the management of foreign 
affairs, of war, of the postal service, the regulation of the value 
of coin and the standard of weights and measures, and <the control 
of Indian affairs. The States were to live in amity, they were to 
extend full rights to one another’s citizens, they were to deliver 
up fugitives of justice to each other, and whenWo or more of them 
fell out, any one State involved could submit the dispute to Con¬ 
gress. The assent of nine States was required for the passage of the 
most important Congressional measures.^ 

The failure of the attempts by Corigress to make the Articles 
really workable is an old story. These attempts consisted chiefly 
in requests to the States for money which was never paid, calls 
for additions to the army which filled no ranks, and petitions for 
special powers which the States never unanimously gsafyted. Two 
months after Maryland gave the last ratification, Washington com¬ 
menced a diary, to which he prefixed a biting description of the 
nation’s empty magazines, ill-supplied warehouses, and lack of trans¬ 
port. He added that “instead of having the regiments completed to 
the new establishment, which ought to have been done agreeably to 
the requisitions of Congress, scarce any State in the Union has at 
this hour an eighth part of its quota in the field, and little prospect 
that I can see of ever getting more than half; in a word, instead of 
having everything in readiness to take the field, we have nothing. 
...” 33 The commander had shaped his measures early this year 
to attack Clinton in New York city, but he was forced reluctantly 

38 “Writings,” IX, 236ft. At the close of the previous summer. Washington had 
reported that he was under th.e necessity either of dismissing part of the militia 
then gathering, or letting them starve when they came forward. He grimly added that 
his difficulties in supplying his forces would be lessened when the year 1781 began, 
for half the army would dissolve. Disaster loomed ahead: “If either the temper or 
the resources of the country will not admit of an alteration, we may expect soon to 
be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of America, in America, 
upheld by foreign arms.” “Writings,” VIII, 386ff. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 627 

to decide against this, in part because his ranks were too thin and 
his force was too ill supplied. Congress in this dark hour before 
the dawn wrote, in desperation, a circular for transmission to the 
States, which, though never approved nor transmitted, remains to 
show into what straits the nation had been brought. The country 
was sinking deeper and deeper into debt, with no visible means of 
repayment; it was becoming harder and harder to raise money at 
home or abroad; and the troops were growing more and more dis¬ 
heartened. “The inattention in the States,” ran its reproachful 
words, “has almost endangered our very existence as a people.” 34 

While the Articles were still before the States for ratification, as 
their defects were slowly realized, much thought was given to the 
possibility of amending them. New Jersey was insistent in urging 
one important change. Her delegates said (1778) that she wished 
the sole and exclusive power of regulating trade with foreign nations 
to be vested in Congress, and the revenue of a national tariff used 
for the general benefit; arguing that any other course might involve 
many difficulties and embarrassments, and be attended with injustice 
to some States in the Union. She was induced to relinquish her 
proposed amendments, but once more before the Articles were fully 
ratified, her delegates evinced their dissatisfaction by a milder pro¬ 
posal. On February 3, 1780, Witherspoon laid a legislative resolu¬ 
tion before Congress, stating the opinion of New Jersey that it was 
absolutely necessary for Congress to have authority, whenever nine 
States consented, to superintend the commercial regulations of every 
State, and to lay duties on all imports. Of course it was im¬ 
practicable to add any such article. 35 

Five days after the Maryland delegates signed the Articles, Var- 
num of Rhode Island moved that a committee be appointed to digest 
such additions to the fundamental law as seemed necessary during 
the crisis of the war; these additions to lapse and become void when 


8*Cf S B. Webb December 9, 1779: “• • • money depreciating, public virtue totally 

damned—morals of good men affected—public men and public measures like the money, 
[and] in short everything is as nothing should be—no steps taken for reinforcing our 
army against another campaign—members of Congress and their puppies throwing the 
whole country in a state of stupidity—with an idea our salvation is to be worked out 
in Europe this winter.” “Corr. and Journals,” II, 224-26. 

85 For Hamilton’s plan of an alternative to the Articles (September, 1780), see his 
“Works ” I, 203-28. Hamilton’s conviction that the country needed “a solid coercive 
union” was Washington’s conviction. The latter wrote: “If we mean to continue 
our struggles, ... we must do it upon an entirely new plan . . . ample power must 
be lodged in Congress, as the head of the Federal Union, adequate to all the purposes 
of war.” And again: “There can be no radical cure till Congress is vested by the 
States with full and ample powers to enact laws for general purposes. Writings, 
IX 13* 125. Hamilton even wrote of a revolutionary assumption of powers. 


628 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the conflict was won. His motion was the fruit of a movement in 
Congress awakened and given impetus chiefly by Madison, who was 
effectively seconded by Duane. The committee, consisting of Madi¬ 
son, Duane, and Varnum, was actually appointed, with instructions 
“to prepare a plan to invest the United States in Congress assembled 
with full and explicit powers for effectually carrying into execution 
in the several States all acts or resolutions passed agreeably to the 
Articles of Confederation.” It worked rapidly, and on May 3 re¬ 
ported a scheme for really putting teeth into the Articles. Madison 
and his associates pointed out their chief defect—the fact that they 
gave Congress no power to enforce its measures—and to meet it 
suggested an additional article. It provided that whenever one or 
more States refused to abide by the decisions of Congress, or to 
observe all the Articles of Confederation, Congress was then “fully 
authorized to employ the force of the United States as well by sea as 
by land to compel such States to fulfill their Federal engagements,” 
and particularly was authorized to make distraint on the property 
of the State or its citizens, and to cut off its trade with the rest of 
the United States and the world. 36 

Now began a series of delays. The proposed article, which greatly 
alarmed several delegates, Madison thought should become a part of 
the basic law when ratified by all the States not in the hands of the 
enemy. It was at once referred to a grand committee. Not even 
this much consideration was given to a motion by Mathews, of 
South Carolina, that during the rest of the war Congress should 
regard itself as empowered to execute any ordinances which it 
thought necessary for victory. And when the grand committee upon 
Madison’s, Duane’s, and Varnum’s additional article made its report 
on July 20, 1781, it was seen that it also had been shelved. The 
committee brought in a neat plan of its own, falling into three 
divisions. It proposed that the States be requested to grant Con¬ 
gress the power to lay an embargo in time of war, the power to 
demand quotas of money, and the power to collect this money 
through its agents. Congress having refused to act directly upon 

88 At Richmond, in the middle of May, 1784, Patrick Henry met Madison and two 
other members in a coffee-house, and, expressing regret over the slow progress of the 
impost plan, suggested that Madison and one other legislator sketch a plan for giving 
Congress greater powers. The resolutions which the Legislature soon after adopted 
urged, among other things, that Congress speedily settle its accounts with the various 
States, and that the balances due to Congress “ought to be enforced, if necessary, by 
such distress on the property of the defaulting States or their citizens as the United 
States, in Congress assembled, deem adequate and most eligible.” Bancroft, “Hist, 
of the Const.,” two volume ed., I, 162. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 629 

even this substitute, another committee of three—Randolph, Var- 
num, and Ellsworth—was created to consider it in turn. 

This third committee was bolder than the second, but not as 
bold as Madison wished. On August 22, 1781, it brought in a 
report which included an exposition of the Articles, a plan for their 
execution, and certain supplementary articles comprehending seven 
new powers. They allowed Congress to lay embargoes during the 
continuance of the war; to draft rules for the seizure of private 
property for war purposes; to control the collection of taxes imposed 
for meeting the requisitions of Congress; to admit as a new State 
any part of an old one, with the consent of the latter; to agree 
with any other nations as to the opening of American consulates 
abroad; within certain limitations, to alter the rules which regulated 
the mode of voting upon different measures in Congress; and—this 
was highly important—to distrain the property of any State which 
fell behind in its contributions in money or men. Though the report 
constituted one of the most earnest and careful efforts yet made for 
patching up the Articles, it proved as abortive as those which had 
preceded it. Action was postponed, and the subject was allowed 
to drop. 

But the desperate fight to improve the national Constitution was 
still maintained. On October 3, 1781, the day Cornwallis wrote 
Clinton that the Americans were encamped about two miles from 
Yorktown, a fourth effort was made in Congress for at least a tem¬ 
porary increase of Congressional powers. A committee under Robert 
R. Livingston presented three resolves. One requested the Legisla¬ 
tures to vest in Congress the power “to call forth men and provisions 
and carriages whenever they shall deem them necessary for the 
common defense, and to assist their officers in collecting the same”— 
the boldness of the proposal lying in the latter clause. A second 
was designed to obviate, for the moment, the necessity of appealing 
to the Legislatures for men and supplies. Since many assemblies 
were not in session, and the military crisis would probably pass 
before they could be called, the committee suggested a resolution 
“that Congress, by the authority which the nature of the trust im¬ 
posed in them vests them with, will immediately take measures 
to procure the supplies of men, provisions, and carriages necessary 
to give vigor and success in the operations of the present campaign.” 
The final resolve simply asked the Governors for every possible 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


630 

assistance during the emergency. However, the surrender of Corn¬ 
wallis a fortnight later removed the critical necessities which had 
prompted these measures. 

The fact that the war was now ending impressed many statesmen 
with the urgency of strengthening the powers of Congress over 
the States before, to use Washington’s word, the interest of the 
people in the national government was “relaxed” by happier times. 
For a while the hope persisted that by a simple process of amend¬ 
ment the Articles might be made over into a serviceable national 
Constitution. The creation of executive departments had begun in 
the first months of 1781. In January, Congress had created a De¬ 
partment of Foreign Affairs, and in February it agreed to a scheme 
for a Superintendent of Finance, a Secretary of War, and a Secretary 
of the Marine, while a committee of Congress recommended on 
February 16 the establishment of an Attorney-Generalship, and a 
Federal court to try offenders against the United States. By an 
ordinance for the trial of piracy cases, the first Federal tribunal was 
established on April 5. This elaboration of Federal machinery in¬ 
creased the powers exercised by Congress, and dignified the general 
government. But the legislators of New York, inspired by Ham¬ 
ilton and Duane, believed that something more than a mere piece¬ 
meal tinkering of the Articles was required, and on July 21, 1781, 
the Assembly voted a proposal for a general convention of the States 
to make the Confederation into a new instrument. 

III. The Impost and the States 

For the first four years after the Declaration of Independence the 
requests of the general government for men, funds, or provisions were 
of a conservative and hand-to-mouth character. Congress never 
looked far ahead, nor tried to arrange for a consistent supply of 
money or munitions, while it soon lost hope of obtaining an ade¬ 
quate national army bound to serve throughout the war. But in the 
early part of 1781 Congress moved to a more important step. The 
States were first asked to levy an import duty of five per cent, on all 
foreign goods, and to hand over the funds to Congressional agents; 
a few days later they were asked to allow Congress itself to levy 
the impost. No time limit was set, so that this revenue would 
automatically flow in indefinitely. The request furnished a sharp 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 631 

immediate test of State willingness to make a sacrifice for strengthen- 
ing the general government. 

The first State to assent was Connecticut, on March 8, 1781— 
Trumbull’s government was always promptly loyal. New York 
followed closely, and in April New Hampshire and Pennsylvania 
voted their acquiescence. Virginia ratified in May, stipulating only 
lhat her grant was not to be effective until August; North Carolina 
and Delaware fell into line that autumn, and South Carolina and 
Maryland early in 1782; while Massachusetts acceded in 1782, but 
reserved to herself the right to appoint the collectors. Only Georgia 
and Rhode Island remained unresponsive, while the former offered 
evidence that her attitude was not unfavorable. Rhode Island’s 
best known delegate in Philadelphia, Varnum, was earnestly in favor 
of increasing the powers of Congress, and had written home to 
Governor Greene that while “prudent caution” was no doubt requi¬ 
site for the preservation of republican institutions, when it was 
pushed too far it defeated its proper ends. In August, 1781, his 
fellow-delegate, Mowry, joined him in assuring Governor Greene 
that they were at a loss to conjecture the rumors which had 
induced the State of Rhode Island to delay complying with the 
requisition of Congress. 

Beyond scattered reports of a State Rights opposition there to 
the impost plan, the first notice to Congress that Rhode Island had 
assumed an unfavorable attitude was the displacement of Ellery, 
Varnum, and Mowry as delegates in 1782 by John Collins, Ezekiel 
Cornell, Jonathan Arnold, and above all, David Howell, who had 
compared the impost with the Stamp Act. When Howell appeared 
before a committee which Congress appointed in 1782 to learn why 
neither Georgia nor Rhode Island had acquiesced in the levy, he 
stated four reasons. First, the State depended almost wholly upon 
commerce for its prosperity, and had to bring in overland from 
Connecticut and Massachusetts a very large part of the agricultural 
commodities it needed. The merchants did not believe that they 
would be able to add the import duty to the price of goods they 
sold outside the State; or, if they could, they feared a retaliatory 
addition to the price of the farm products they ordered in return. 
Second, it seemed unfair to select for a national toll that one source 
of wealth which was most important to Rhode Island, and of little 
importance to many States. It would obviously be more profitable 


632 THE AMERICAN STATES 

to the State to levy its own five per cent, duty, use part of the pro¬ 
ceeds to pay its quota of the national expense as ordinarily deter¬ 
mined, and keep the margin. Third, Rhode Island shared the 
anxiety of Maryland and other small States regarding the Western 
lands; if the trade that might enrich her was to be specially taxed, 
so should be the land sales that would enrich Virginia and Connec¬ 
ticut. Finally, Rhode Island strongly objected to yielding any 
authority over the State’s domestic affairs to outsiders. 37 Not one 
of these arguments had real validity. 

Congress could ill brook a delay. In May, 1782, a committee had 
conferred with Morris upon the financial situation of the country, 
and had reported that matters were going from bad to worse. Some 
States had passed no laws whatever for raising their quota of the 
moneys required by Congress for the year; some had passed laws 
for raising only a part; some had passed laws for raising the whole, 
but at a distant period; and a number of laws were in one respect 
or another defective. The committee, headed by Madison, placed 
no more trust in circular appeals; but, recognizing that some action 
was imperative, it recommended the dispatch of two missions, one 
north and one south, to try to persuade the States to take prompt 
action. During the summer both set out, and they returned with 
the most discouraging reports. In some instances they found it 
impossible to obtain more than fair words from a few members of 
the adjourned legislatures; in some they found an evasive attitude 
on the part of influential men; in some they even found that the 
States had raised money to meet their quotas, but were applying it 
to their own needs. 

All this precipitated a resolution of October 10, 1782, calling 
upon Georgia and Rhode Island for a definite response to the 
impost question. Georgia indicated that in good time she would 
swing into line, but Rhode Island, urged thereto by her delegates, 
Howell and Arnold, definitely chose the opposite course. Howell 
wrote home that “This is but an entering wedge, others will follow, 
a land tax, a poll tax, and an excise”; and he and Arnold dwelt 
upon the argument that Rhode Island had as much right to her 
duties as other States had to their Western claims. The Assembly 
voted unanimously on November 1 against the impost, and Speaker 

37 The objections of Howell are summarized in Bates, p. 78; and a comprehensive 
letter which Robert Morris wrote to Governor Greene in answer to Howell is 
described on p. 79. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 633 

Bradford reported the result to Congress, with a statement of reasons 
which Madison and Hamilton crushingly answered. 

As soon as an unofficial report reached Congress in December, 
1782, of the Assembly’s action, it was resolved to send a deputation 
to urge upon Rhode Island the desperate nature of the case. 
Throughout the country, the reception given to the news from 
Rhode Island, though generally unfavorable, was not unmixed. 
Many men were pleased. Word coming in that Maryland was on 
the point of revoking her grant, the Congressional deputation delayed 
its departure till three days before Christmas; it had not gone a 
half day’s journey from Philadelphia before the news arrived that 
Virginia had repealed her grant, and, turning about, it was promptly 
excused from its errand. The bitterness in Congress among those 
who had looked with joy upon the proposed measure, as a long step 
towards a permanent strengthening of the national government, was 
great. Correspondingly great was the jubilation of Howell, Arnold, 
and a few others who had regarded with open distrust all the impli¬ 
cations of the impost. There was some hope that Virginia, which 
had been induced to take its backward step by Richard Henry Lee 
at a moment when, the session just closing, the Assembly was very 
thin, would again step forward, but no such hope existed as to 
Rhode Island. The influence of Howell, who declared that her 
resistance to British tyranny was not more glorious than her stand 
against the impost, was evidently predominant in the little State. 38 

Partly as a punishment for Howell’s opposition to its will, and 
partly to weaken his influence at home, Congress now turned to an 
investigation of certain newspaper dicta which it had noticed, and 
which it feared might injure “as well the national character of the 
United States and the honor of Congress as the finances of the said 
State . . it being well known that he was the author. A Con¬ 
gressional committee fell upon one statement in particular. It was 
a communication in the Boston Gazette of November 10, 1782, from 
Philadelphia, alleging that letters to Congress from Adams, who 
had been in Holland, showed that the credit of the nation abroad 
was excellent, and that loans were readily procurable. This, said 
the committee, was an unfounded and untruthful assertion. The 
Secretary of Foreign Affairs was thereupon requested to obtain from 
the Governor of Rhode Island information as to the author of the 

“Providence Gazette, April 1 2, 1782; Bates, 83. 


634 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

communication. Nobody doubted his identity, but as Madison put 
it, it was believed that a formal detection would humiliate and dis¬ 
credit him in his own State. The result signally disappointed this 
expectation. Howell admitted that he had written the communica¬ 
tion, but defended it as substantially true, and insisted that Con¬ 
gress had no authority over his correspondence with the State 
executive. Arnold seconded him, and the Assembly voted its 
approval of the whole course of its delegates. 

Congress, as 1783 opened, had other troubles than the defeat of 
the impost plan. During the previous year even the current pay of 
the army had fallen greatly behind. The army was growing dis¬ 
satisfied with its long wait for arrears, as a memorial from the 
officers showed, and some feared that the clamors of the rank and 
file would end in a revolt. Washington himself was worried over 
the probable consequences of discharging troops without a penny, 
with a burden of debt, and with the reflection that their reward 
for years of hardship and peril was misery and want. “You may 
rely upon it,” he wrote the Secretary of War in October, 1782, “the 
patriotism and long-suffering of this army are almost exhausted, and 
that there never was so great a spirit of discontent as at this instant. 
While in the field I think it may be kept from breaking into acts 
of outrage; but when we retire into winter quarters, unless the 
storm is previously dissipated, I cannot be at ease respecting the 
consequences.” 

The officers felt their ill-treatment as keenly as the privates. At 
the beginning of the Revolution the commissioned men had been 
promised half pay for seven years if they fought to its end, and 
in 1780 this promise had been increased to half pay for life. When 
early in 1781 the question of commuting this life-pension to a cash 
payment was raised in Congress, it produced a marked stir inside 
and outside that body. Within Congress, it raised in a new form the 
issue between the partisans of a strong national government, and 
those of State rights. It was Hamilton's wish, and to a certain 
extent Madison’s, that the whole public debt, including the money 
owed the army, be funded, and that Continental certificates be given 
the creditors. Both the officers and the creditors would then feel 
better assured of fair, uniform, and prompt attention, while both 
would be attached by strong ties of self-interest to the national 
government. On the other hand, the State Rights party wished all 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 635 

public obligations, including the payment of the Continental officers 
from the various States, left to the several commonwealths. 

The army awaited the deliberations of Congress with rising 
impatience. In March, 1783, an incitation to violence was offered 
the Continental camp at Newburgh by a meeting of officers, but was 
stingingly rebuked by Washington. Immediately afterwards, upon 
his warm representations, Congress agreed to meet the troops’ de¬ 
mands. The promise of half-pay for life was commuted to five 
years’ full pay in one gross sum, for which certificates bearing six 
per cent, interest were issued. 

Five years’ pay seemed a large grant indeed to the impoverished 
States, and was bitterly resented by some, as a symptom of “extrava¬ 
gance” and as supporting the suspicion that Congress wished to hold 
both the sword and the purse. The results were especially serious 
in New England. In Massachusetts the General Court voiced its 
indignation vigorously. It informed Congress that the extraordinary 
concessions to the civil and military officers were producing “effects 
of a threatening aspect” throughout the State. The commutation 
of half-pay to officers was in especial, it thought, “a grant of more 
than an adequate reward for their services, and inconsistent with 
that equality which ought to subsist among citizens of free and 
republican States; . . . such a measure appeared to be calculated 
to raise and exalt some citizens in wealth and grandeur, to the injury 
and oppression of others.” 39 In Connecticut the same sentiments 
were expressed. Trumbull resigned in the fall of 1783* an d spoke 
in his final message of the necessity of strengthening the powers of 
Congress. The Legislature refused to express approval of his mes¬ 
sage as usual, disliking its tenor; “so exceedingly jealous is the 
spirit of this State at present respecting the powers and engagements 
of Congress,” Trumbull explained to Washington, “arising princi¬ 
pally from their aversion to the half-pay and commutation granted 
to the army.” 40 These State objections led to the appointment of 
a Congressional committee, which sustained the grant as sound in 
policy and completely constitutional. But such were the reflections 
of State jealousy within Congress that, in the debate on its report, 
the declaration of the constitutional power of Congress was stricken 
out. The delegates of Massachusetts declined to vote on the final 
question. 

89 Hamilton, “Hist. Republic,” II, Ch. 35- 

*° Washington, “Writings,” X, 34 I_ 4 2 * 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


636 

The acceptance of these new burdens by Congress made it more 
urgent than ever to find a permanent and reliable revenue; the 
national leaders simply could not afford to regard the defeat of the 
impost plan as final. If the national debt were not gradually re¬ 
duced, the Union would eventually break up under the strain, yet 
it was almost impossible to meet even the interest. Nothing but 
a general fund under Congressional control would obviate the State 
and sectional quarrels over financial burdens. Washington, in his 
address from Newburgh to the State Governors on disbanding the 
army, put the situation bluntly. He insisted: 

That, unless the States will suffer Congress to exercise those prerogatives they are 
undoubtedly vested with by the Constitution, everything must very rapidly tend to 
anarchy and confusion. That it is indispensable to the happiness of the individual 
States, that there should be lodged somewhere a supreme power to regulate and 
govern the genera! concerns of the confederated republic, without which the Union 
cannot be of long duration. That there must be a faithful and pointed compliance, on 
the part of every State, with the late proposals and demands of Congress, or the most 
fatal consequences will ensue. That whatever measures have a tendency to dissolve 
the Union, or contribute to violate or lessen the sovereign authority, ought to be con¬ 
sidered as hostile to the liberty and independency of America, and the authors of 
them treated accordingly. 41 

Madison, now the leader in Congress, moved quickly. Some 
thought that Virginia’s repeal of her consent to the impost had tied 
his hands. The Legislature had said that “The permitting any 
power other than the General Assembly of this Commonwealth to 
levy duties or taxes upon the citizens of this State within the same 
is injurious to our sovereignty, may prove destructive of the rights 
and liberties of the people, and so far as Congress might exercise 
the same, is contravening the spirit of the Confederation in the 
eighth article thereof.” It was commonly held that delegates in 
Congress were not free agents, but ambassadors of the State, bound 
to carry out its legislative wishes absolutely. But the very day after 
Bland laid Virginia’s resolutions before Congress, on January 27, 
1783, Madison offered a motion stating that Congress believed the 
establishment of permanent and adequate funds, supported evenly 
throughout the country, for the national government, to be indis¬ 
pensable. Both Hamilton and Madison spoke for the resolution, 
the latter the more effectively; for Hamilton contended that all 
collectors of Federal revenue should be appointed and paid by Con¬ 
gress, inasmuch as they would then feel an interest in supporting 
the Federal authority. To extreme State Rights men, erecting the 
Federal power into a bogie, this seemed a frank unmasking of the 

41 Washington, “Writings,” X, 254ft. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 637 

sinister object of the advocates of a Federal impost. Madison 
glossed over Hamilton’s indiscretion, showed the irrefragable reasons 
supporting the plan, and asked why there was so much distrust of 
Congress, which had long controlled the nation’s purse. 

On March 7, 1783, the Congressional committee upon revenue 
reported in favor of renewing the proposal for the five per cent, 
import duty, ad valorem, upon nearly all foreign goods, and asked 
for a similar duty upon all prizes condemned in courts of admiralty, 
and for a specific tax upon wines and other liquors, sugars and salts, 
pepper, cocoa, molasses, coffee, and tea, as they were imported. 
These duties were to run just a quarter-century after all the States 
had consented, and the revenue was to be applied exclusively to the 
payment of the interest on the national debt. It was to be collected 
by men appointed by the States, but acting under the orders of 
Congress. 

This was, in all, an excellent plan. Hamilton, after earnestly 
supporting Madison’s resolution, had suggested a much less sagacious 
scheme; he wished the taxes laid for the national benefit to be 
direct taxes upon property in the States, and he believed that they 
should be collected by appointees of Congress. It would have been 
impossible to obtain State consent to this scheme, even if their 
delegations in Congress had approved it. But Madison’s plan was 
thought much more palatable than the old proposals, for the limita¬ 
tion of the taxes to a quarter-century, and the new arrangement for 
their collection, were designed expressly to meet objections that 
had been encountered in the States. With the revised impost plan 
was coupled an appeal for supplementary funds to provide for the 
current expenses of government; each State being asked to establish 
a substantial and sufficient revenue for the payment of its quota. 
The whole body of requests was approved by Congress on April 
18, 1783, with only the Rhode Island delegates, Hamilton, and 
Higginson of Massachusetts voting in the negative. It was sent out 
with an explanatory address, written by Madison, and with a refu¬ 
tation, from Hamilton’s pen, of Rhode Island’s objections to the first 
impost plan. 42 

An account of the attitude of the various States has been left 
us by Madison, who was in a position to analyze shrewdly the 

43 Elliot’s “Debates,” I, 92ff, gives the documents named here. See also Hamilton, 
“Hist. Republic,” II, 514ft- 


638 THE AMERICAN STATES 

motives of State policy. Of the New England States all but Rhode 
Island were at the outset in favor of the revised proposals. New 
Hampshire wished neither her imports nor her exports taxed by 
the States through which much of them had to pass; Massachusetts 
was worried over the large sum owed her by the general government, 
and wished provision made for its repayment; and Connecticut 
was eager to be relieved of the heavy import taxes laid by New 
York and Rhode Island. All the Middle States could be fairly 
counted upon to support the new impost plan, though Maryland 
was lukewarm. In New York, for example, Hamilton, Duane, and 
others desired a strong national government in and for itself, while 
many influential citizens who hardly shared this sentiment were 
eager to have the national debt provided for. As for Maryland, 
though she had never been trampled by contending armies, though 
her people held few securities of the United States, and though she 
was still sullen over the question of the Western lands, Madison 
believed that her desire for national tranquillity would bring her 
into line. Of the Southern States, Virginia and the Carolinas all 
needed protection against the commercial dominance of New 
England. It was true that in Virginia, a counter-motive existed in 
certain quarters in the shape of an unwillingness to surrender the 
privilege of taxing North Carolina by import duties, but this ren¬ 
dered North Carolina’s wish to obtain immunity from the demands 
of other States the greater. South Carolina was impoverished by 
the war, which had taught her how exposed her position was; and 
she was a creditor of the United States. Georgia also was weak, and 
was threatened by Spanish and Indian aggressions. 43 

Yet the moment was less favorable than Madison believed. The 
issue between the believers in a closely cohesive nation and the 
advocates of a loose confederacy had by now been fairly joined, 
and the resentment of the determined champions of State sovereignty 
and independence was already a considerable obstacle. This was 


43 Washington wrote the States that it was their duty to grant the impost without 
hesitation, and warned them against a “spirit of disunion, or obstinacy and perverse¬ 
ness.” He pursued: “This is the moment to give such a tone to our Federal govern¬ 
ment as will enable it to answer the ends of its institution. According to the system 
of policy the States shall adopt at this moment, it is to be decided whether the Revolu¬ 
tion must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse; a blessing or a curse, not 
to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unknown millions be 
involved. . . .” He added that any obstinate State would be responsible for all the 
consequences. Edmund Randolph wrote Madison that the first effect of his message 
upon the Virginia Legislature was to increase the hope of the liberal group for the 
passage of the impost act, but that he feared the final consequences would be bad: 
“For the murmur is free and general against what is called the unsolicited obtrusion 
of his advice.” (Washington, “Writings,” X, 261 note.) 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 639 

evident in Congress itself before the session of 1783 had proceeded 
far. “The purse,” said Arthur Lee, “ought never to be put into 
the same hand with the sword. I will be explicit; I would rather 
see Congress a rope of sand than a rod of iron.” 44 “If the Federal 
compact is such as has been represented,” said John Mercer, “I will 
immediately withdraw from Congress and do everything in my 
power to destroy its existence.” 45 Quotations from other Virginians, 
not in Congress, show in how far Madison was deceived as to the 
sentiment of his own State. George Mason, writing the instruc¬ 
tions for the legislators representing Fairfax County, condemned the 
impost plan and the Congressional arguments supporting it. Ex¬ 
amine them carefully, he said, and they will evince plainly a lust 
for power. They are just like the arguments used for the ship 
money, and to justify the arbitrary measures of the Stuarts. Let 
these new powers be added to those which Congress already has, 
“and the Constitutions of government in the different States will 
prove mere parchment bulwarks to American liberty.” R. H. Lee 
wrote from Chantilly a month later in the same terms. Arguments 
could always be found to serve an inordinate thirst for authority; 
if Congress grasped the purse, she would presently have the sword 
as well, and then the rule of rotation in office would also be 
smashed. It is no wonder that the Virginia Legislature in the spring 
of 1783 rejected the new impost plan by a great majority. Instead, 
it laid its own impost duties, on the same scale as that asked by 
Congress, created its own officers to collect them, and provided for 
their payment into the national treasury. 46 

In New York two essayists, first “Calca” and then “Rough 
Hewer,” filled many newspaper columns with the arguments used 
by Mason and Lee in Virginia. Greene wrote from South Carolina 
that the people there hated Robert Morris and Congress, holding 
that they had been grossly neglected by both in their financial 
distress; he thought that they leaned towards an independence of 


« Silas Deane took the same view, writing April i, 1783: “If my advice is of any 
weight with our great men in Connecticut, let them liquidate, and apportion the public 
debt, without loss of time, and let each State take its proportion, and manage its own 
revenues. The great object with Congress is to make a common purse or treasury 
to be supplied by imposts, duties, etc., laid by themselves, and collected and disposed 
of by officers of their appointing independent of the several Legislatures, but if our 
Assembly are wise and mean to be in fact independent they will never submit to a 
system which will prove as fatal in its consequences, as that which we have happily 
opposed; no, let each State guard well the strings of its own purse. . . . Corr. and 
Journals’’ of S. B. Webb, III, 9-11. 

« Gilpin, “Madison Papers,” I, 357 . Sn. 

48 R. H. Lee, “Letters,” II, 283-85; Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 48-52; 59-6o. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


640 

the Congressional connection. In Connecticut, which Madison had 
accounted safe, the new impost scheme was for the moment curtly 
rebuffed. 

Delaware, in June, was the first State to comply with the request 
of Congress; and on August 25, Pennsylvania became the second, 
by a unanimous vote of the Assembly. In both States the grant of 
the impost was coupled with the grant of the State’s current quota 
of the Federal requisition. In August also, South Carolina went 
as far as Virginia had done, adopting the impost schedule, but 
placing its collection in the hands of State officers, and appropri¬ 
ating the revenues to the payment of South Carolina’s quota under 
the Federal requisitions. In Massachusetts a severe struggle 
occurred. Nearly forty towns had instructed their representatives 
to vote against the impost plan. But the House carried the impost 
bill by a majority of seven, and it defeated an amendment to forbid 
any use of the receipts to settle the half-pay accounts of the officers 
by a majority of ten; while the Senate passed the bill almost 
unanimously. The town meeting in Boston, in answer to complaints 
from some other towns, asserted that “if we ever mean to be a 
nation, we must give the power to Congress, and funds too.” 47 But 
after these initial successes the progress of the measure grew slower 
and slower. 

By the latter part of 1785 nine States had in some form accepted 
the impost: all the New England States except Rhode Island, all 
the Middle States except New York, and all the Southern States 
except Maryland and Georgia. Some, like Virginia and South Caro¬ 
lina, had accepted it in a very imperfect manner, but Congress 
correctly felt that once all had acquiesced in the principle, it would 
be possible to induce the States which had passed defective laws to 
amend them. Rhode Island had at first ignored the proposals of 
Congress, passing her own tariff act; she had then rejected them; 
and finally she had enacted a conglomerate, but almost wholly bad 
law, complying only in a small part with the Congressional require¬ 
ments. She imposed the duties as requested, with some additions; 
but she insisted upon collecting them through her own agents, and 
she consented to use only $8000 a year from the proceeds towards 

47 In Connecticut, the impost proposal passed the House by a majority of fifty-one. 
“Never did people in general feel more satisfaction at any public measure,” wrote a 
Hartford correspondent to the Pennsylvania Packet of June 8, 1784, “than in conse¬ 
quence of this act”; Connecticut was always sound. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 641 

payment of the foreign debts of the nation, reserving the rest to 
discharge that part of the country’s domestic debt which was held 
in Rhode Island. The influence of Howell and Ellery was evident 
in this enactment, which was of course preposterous from a Federal 
point of view; it was simply a plan for State revenue. 

As for the request for the supplementary funds, that was now 
dead. Five of the States which had granted the impost—Massa¬ 
chusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, and South Carolina 
—had manifested their unwillingness to make this additional con¬ 
cession to Congress. All in all, Congress had reason to feel de¬ 
cidedly discouraged. 

Congress knew by this time that the success of the revised impost 
plan was becoming a desperate necessity. At the beginning of the 
year 1786 a grand committee was appointed to inquire into the 
fiscal affairs of the nation, and the best means of discharging its 
debts; and its report, showing that although since October 1, 1781, 
requisitions totaling $15,670,000 had been made, the response had 
been insufficient to pay the interest on the foreign borrowings, was 
presented at the beginning of February. Indeed, the amounts paid 
in reached only $2,419,000, of which Georgia and North Carolina 
had contributed not a cent. For the fourteen months ending 
December 31, 1785, the receipts from the States had been at the 
rate of less than $400,000 yearly, though it was estimated that in 
1787 more than $2,500,000 would be required to maintain the gov¬ 
ernment and meet the interest on the public debt.' Moreover, in 
1787 the first instalment on the principal of the public debt fell 
due. Thereafter it would cost a million a year to reduce it. Under 
the circumstances, even R. H. Lee began to understand that Con¬ 
gress could not obtain the needed moneys unless there was some 
real expansion of its powers; and the wiser statesmen and thinkers 
believed in the necessity of arming it with a right to coerce any 
State that failed to pay its requisition. Indeed, in 1784 the 
Virginia Legislature, following New York, had resolved that Congress 
ought to enforce the payment of balances due from any State by 
distraint on its or its citizens’ property. 

After some hesitation, Congress took the action urgently recom¬ 
mended by a committee which Rufus King headed, and eloquently 
pleaded again with the States to adhere without reservations to the 
impost plan. This appeal was effective in three of the four States 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


642 

which had hitherto blocked the reform. On February 15, after five 
years of opposition, Rhode Island consented. By the beginning of 
May Rufus King could inform John Adams that Maryland and 
Georgia also had yielded. 48 New York alone refused to fall into 
line, for when her Legislature passed the impost act, it was with 
amendments which made passage a defeat. The Legislature insisted 
that the collection be kept in State hands, and that the duties must 
be payable in bills of credit of New York State. Congress, learning 
of the action of New York in August, 1786, felt that almost its last 
hope was gone, and this was the fact, for its effort to induce 
Governor Clinton to call a special legislative session was quite 
unavailing. 49 To its appeals the executive turned a deaf ear, alleg¬ 
ing there was no crisis. 

Concurrently with the efforts of Congress to wring a stable revenue 
from the States ran its efforts to obtain from them a sufficient con¬ 
trol over shipping to enable it to wage commercial warfare with 
nations discriminating against the United States. The British 
restrictions were especially resented; moreover, great quantities of 
English goods were flooding the country, stifling our infant manu¬ 
factures and draining away our specie. Madison stated in Sep¬ 
tember, 1783, that Congress would have to undertake some defensive 
plan, and the commercial sentiment of the North thereafter veered 
steadily in favor of determined action by the central government. 
The concrete proposals of Congress to meet the situation were formu¬ 
lated early in 1784 and submitted to the States under date of April 
30. It asked that, for fifteen years, power be given it to prohibit 
the shipment of any goods into or out of any American port in 
vessels owned or navigated by foreigners; unless the foreigners 
were citizens of a nation with which the United States had a treaty 
of commerce. Furthermore, Congress desired power for the same 
period to prohibit foreigners in this country from importing, unless 
by special treaty, any goods from another land than their own. 
This program was calculated to appeal to men who saw the danger 

48 Rufus King, “Life and Corr.,” I, 172-74. 

49 The result in New York bore out the prediction Schuyler had made in a letter to 
Hamilton three years before (May 4, 1783). He wrote then that “although our Legis¬ 
lature seems still inclined to confer powers on Congress adequate to the proper dis¬ 
charge of the great duties of the sovereign council of these States, yet I perceive with 
pain that some, chagrined at disappointment, are already attempting to inculcate a 
contrary principle, and I fear it will gain too deep a root to be eradicated, until such 
confusion prevails as will make men deeply feel the necessity of not retaining so much 
sovereignty in the States individually,” For the petition signed all over New York 
city in behalf of the impost, see Hamilton, “Hist. Republic,” III, 171-72. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 643 


of our defenseless economic condition, and even Rhode Island, it 
was said, would make little objection. 50 

Yet when Congress a year later looked about, it found little 
had been accomplished. The proposal was therefore modified to 
meet the objections which, it was understood, had been raised in 
various States. Congress now asked for authority to control the 
foreign and coastal trade, and to fix the duties upon importations; 
but with the proviso that all enactments for these purposes should 
have the consent not only of nine States in Congress but of nine 
Legislatures, that they should be limited in duration, and that the 
duties should be collected in the names of the States in which they 
were paid, and should be held for the use of those States. 51 This 
new scheme was given encouraging support all over the nation. 
Its advocates could point not only to the more and more irksome 
British discriminations, but to the aggressions of the Barbary states, 
whose cruisers were by this time fully launched upon their course 
of aggression. But their hopes were to be dashed. 

As was to be expected, men found on March 3, 1786, when a 
Congressional committee reported on the subject, that the State 
enactments had been as various and conflicting as those which 
followed the request for the Continental impost. Four States, 
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, had passed 
such acts as Congress had recommended. In the first, for example, 
a Boston town-meeting in the spring of the previous year, the 
mechanics as well as the shipping interests being strongly for the 
measure, had drawn up an address to other ports, dwelling upon 
the British restrictions, and asking that Congress be empowered 
to regulate commerce, in order “to secure reciprocity, and to form 
a national establishment.” Governor Bowdoin had insisted that it 
was the duty of the State to vest Congress with the required au¬ 
thority, and the Legislature had promptly responded. In Virginia, 
Madison’s influence had been sufficient. Three other States, Con¬ 
necticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, had passed the desired laws, 
but had* fixed two different dates from which they were to be opera¬ 
tive; so that the duration of the powers of Congress would differ in 
different parts of the country. New Hampshire had granted the 


60-Rates IO r Gilpin, “Madison Papers,” I, 572 ff shows Madison’s shrewd esti- 
Bates ioi, uup , monopolizing our trade. “The supposed contrariety 

SS. th? impotence of the Federal Government, are 

urged ... as a safeguard against retaliation 

« Journals Cont. Congress, Ed. 1823, IV, 546 * 47 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


644 

power of regulating trade, by restrictions or duties, her act being 
of insufficient scope. Rhode Island and North Carolina had vested 
Congress with authority over imports alone, the former for twenty- 
five years, the latter for an indefinite term; and North Carolina 
had stipulated that when all the States had complied with the Con¬ 
gressional proposal, it should become part of the Articles of Con¬ 
federation. The three remaining States had done nothing whatever. 

The Congressional committee could recommend but one course— 
that Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Connecticut should amend their 
laws to make the new powers of Congress commence the day Con¬ 
gress began exercising them; that New Hampshire, North Carolina, 
and Rhode Island should give their acts due breadth and free them 
from clogging conditions; and that the laggard trio, Delaware, South 
Carolina, and Georgia, should take favorable action on the Con¬ 
gressional demand. 52 

This appeal brought a remarkable, though not a sufficient, re¬ 
sponse. South Carolina, indeed, acted before it could have heard 
of it, her law dating from March n. Delaware promptly assented, 
and Georgia passed her law on August 2, 1786. No State had now 
failed to take at least partial action. Of those whose enactments 
had been faulty, Rhode Island on March 13, 1786, voted Congress 
full power over both imports and exports, and though she attached 
the condition that the law should not take effect until Congress 
obtained authority to regulate interstate trade as well, her action 
was deemed satisfactory. But New Hampshire and North Carolina, 
by failing to amend their enactments, remained at the close of 1786 
the great obstacles to the full success of the reform. It was desir-. 
able that other States should recast their legislation to conform 
perfectly with the proposal of Congress, but of these two alone 
could it be said that amendment was indispensable. Congress made 
a last appeal to them, but the hope for a vigorous national govern¬ 
ment was now seen to lie with the Federal Convention. 

IV. Congress and the Peace Treaty 

Congress had now been rebuffed and humiliated in its efforts to 
gain a stable revenue from the States, and to seize the only economic 
weapon available for retaliation against European injuries to our 

M Elliot’s “Debates,” I, io8ff. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 645 

commerce and manufactures. Meanwhile, another acute problem, 
pregnant with new humiliations for the national government, had 
been raised: the problem of enforcing the provisions of the treaty 
of peace with Great Britain. 

The treaty had required not a little of American justice and 
magnanimity. Its fourth article declared that creditors on either 
side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of their 
debts at full sterling value. The fifth article required the United 
States to “earnestly recommend” that the various Legislatures re¬ 
store all estates, rights, and properties confiscated from British 
subjects, and from persons resident in districts occupied by the 
British, when these latter persons had not borne arms against the 
United States. Persons of any other description—e.g., loyalists 
who had fought on the British side—were to have full liberty to 
go to any part of the United States and remain a year for the pur¬ 
pose of recovering their estates and property. Congress was bound 
to intercede in their favor also, asking the States to restore them 
their rights and property freely, they refunding to any new owners the 
price paid for the property. Finally, the sixth article stipulated that 
no further confiscations of British or loyalist property, and no 
further prosecutions of loyalists, should take place anywhere. In 
fine, the United States engaged to do three things without reference 
to the willingness or unwillingness of the States. It was to see 
that British debts were paid; to protect loyalists traveling or resid¬ 
ing in America for a year; and to stop all confiscations and punish¬ 
ments. One thing Congress was to call upon the States to do. It 
was to ask them to restore all estates and rights to British subjects, 
to Americans who had accepted British protection in New York, 
Charleston, and other occupied places, and to American loyalists 
who had not fought in the British armies. The British knew that an 
earnest recommendation by Congress was not a national law. But 
they also knew that the Revolution would have broken down if the 
States had not generally accepted Congressional recommendations 
as laws, and that it had been upon a Congressional recommendation 
in 1777 that confiscation had become general. 

The news that Congress was required to recommend not only 
that prosecutions stop, but that the loyalists be allowed by legal 
process to regain what had been taken from them, provoked a 
violent and nation-wide controversy. John Adams had been willing 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


646 

to offer generous terms to “the wretches how little soever they 
deserve it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary’’; but 
there was little popular feeling with him. For a time after the 
peace the violent and radical element had its way in most States. 
Many who had skulked during the war, of course, exhibited the most 
fury now. But the bitterness left among even brave and liberal 
people by the conflict was great—greater than the bitterness between 
North and South after the Civil War. The patriots could not 
forget that their towns had been burned, their countrysides laid 
waste, their sons or brothers killed in battle or marshalled into 
hideous prison ships. The Tories and British civilians knew well 
what to expect. Before the opening of 1783 they had generally 
deserted Charleston and Savannah, and had begun leaving New 
York city. The richest went to England. The common folk 
flocked to the British possessions in North America, in such num¬ 
bers that within a few years they swelled the population of Canada 
and the Bermudas by 6o,ooo. 53 

Congress did its part with promptness. On January 14, 1784, 
it issued a proclamation asking the States to restore all estates, 
rights, and properties confiscated from British subjects, upon terms 
—as the treaty had provided—equitable to Americans who had pur¬ 
chased the confiscated properties. But when the Legislatures took 
up the question, it was urged that the loss of the British and loyalists 
was nothing compared with the damages sustained by patriot towns 
and individuals. Falmouth, New London, Fairfield, Norfolk, 
Charleston, and other coastal towns had been laid in ruins, and 
Franklin had declared in discussing peace terms that if the accounts 
were strictly balanced, America’s would be much the heavier. The 
loyalists, it was asserted, would provoke mob outrages if allowed 
to settle, and would not become whole-hearted supporters of the 
republic. Considering that, as Jeremy Belknap said, “their mouths 
were full of curses against their king,” this last objection was 
empty, but timorous men, and selfish men with their eyes fixed upon 
loyalist estates, urged it vehemently. 

Riots against the Tories followed their attempts to return; some 
especially shocking disorders at Worcester, Mass., Stamford, Conn., 
Woodbridge, N. J., and in New York city and Charleston might be 

53 Flick, “Loyalism,” Ch. 9. The author estimates that out of a population of 
180,000 in New York State, 90,000 were loyalists, and 35,000 emigrated at the close 
of the Revolution; p. 182. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 647 

listed. Throughout the Carolinas a swift vengeance was visited upon 
many of those who had assisted Tarleton or served with the mur¬ 
derous bands of Tories in the partisan warfare of that section. In 
New England, wrote Belknap, 54 “we flew into a passion, and in 
the face of the treaty resolved in town meetings not to admit the 
refugees; though, had we not been so rash, they would have been 
glad to have come among us on the same terms that the Gibeonites 
were spared, in the days of Joshua.” George Mason tells us 55 that 
in Virginia he everywhere heard men say: “If we are now to pay 
the debts due to British merchants, what have we been fighting for 
all this while?” Caroline County, in this spirit, addressed the Legis¬ 
lature upon “the impolicy, injustice, and oppression of paying British 
debts.” 58 In South Carolina in the summer of 1784 the notorious 
Tory fighter, Love, taking advantage of the safety guaranteed by 
the treaty, and supported by his native effrontery, appeared in the 
region of Ninety-six, where his misdeeds were well known. When 
he was thrown into jail and prosecuted before the Court of Sessions, 
the presiding judge, Aedanus Burke, annulled the case, and declar¬ 
ing that conscience alone could punish the prisoner, dismissed him. 
Burke was perfectly right. But the rough men in the courtroom 
heard his judgment with anger, took the law into their own hands, 
and hanged Love to a neighboring tree. 

Not every State, but almost every State, was guilty of grave 
infractions of the treaty. It was in the South that opposition to the 
compact was greatest, for in addition to the Tory outrages there, the 
South saw a grievance in the fact that large numbers of negroes had 
escaped from bondage by taking protection under the British flag. 
Laurens, helping negotiate the treaty, inserted a clause prohibiting 
the British from “carrying away any negroes or other property” 
when they evacuated our territory; but when they set sail, the 
British sent these black refugees away. This was the humane 
course, and was unselfish; Carleton, to facilitate the payment 
of just American claims for indemnity, caused accurate lists of the 
transported negroes to be made. Some 5000 are said to have left 
Savannah alone. 57 But the Southern States were highly irritated 


“Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., Series V, Vol. II, 282. 

6 ® Rowland’s “Mason,” II, 46^ 

^ Van^yJi'^^Loy^li^ts,” 6 ^; Vee F? A. Ogg, “Jay’s Treaty and The Slavery Inter¬ 
ests,” Annual Report Am. Hist. Ass., 1901, L The infractions of the treaty on both 
sides are thoroughly treated by S. F. Bemis in Jay s Treaty. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


648 

by the loss of so many workers. In South Carolina Rutledge was 
attacked for not having made it impossible for the British to carry 
them off; and in Virginia the Legislature angrily denounced the 
violation of the treaty. 

After Yorktown, Virginians were inflamed by what they had 
suffered from the invaders in the closing stages of the war. In the 
last days of 1782, the House of Delegates defended the justice of 
the confiscation laws, and unanimously resolved “that all demands 
and requests of the British court for the restitution of property con¬ 
fiscated by this State, being neither supported by law, equity, or 
policy, are wholly inadmissible; and that our delegates be instructed 
to move Congress that they may direct their delegates, who shall 
represent these States in a general Congress for adjusting a peace 
or truce, neither to agree to any such restitution, nor submit that 
the laws made by any independent State of the Union be subject to 
any adjudication of any power or powers on earth.” Put bluntly, 
this was the preposterous demand that no treaty be made which 
might conflict with any law by any State. British merchants and 
agents who quitted Virginia and Maryland at the beginning of the 
Revolution left property there, including debts, to the amount of 
£3,000,000 sterling. They had no sooner begun to return after 
the peace than on July 2, 1783, the Governor of Virginia ordered 
all loyalists or British citizens to leave the State forthwith. In 
October the Legislature, while preventing the immigration of refu¬ 
gee Tories from other States to Virginia, removed the restrictions 
on factors and merchants. But the laws which prevented British 
creditors from collecting debts, or recovering other property, con¬ 
tinued in full force. 

The Carolinas and Georgia were as harsh and unreasonable as 
Virginia. North Carolina refused to retrace the steps it had taken 
for the confiscation of loyalist property, passing in October, 1784, 
a law directing the sale of such holdings, and thirteen months later 
an act to secure the buyers of confiscated estates in their titles. 
The confiscations and amercements ordered by the Jacksonborough 
Legislature of South Carolina in 1782 have already been described, 
and Jay regarded the ordinances of the following year for the sale 
of confiscated estates as a flat violation of the treaty. Not until 
1786 was a bill carried which finally closed up “the business of 
confiscation and amercement.” An equally heinous contravention 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 649 

of the treaty was the law of 1784 forbidding suit for any debt 
contracted by any citizen of the United States before February 26, 
1782, and until the beginning of 1785, and prescribing the repay¬ 
ment of such debts by instalments. The application of this law 
should have been limited to American creditors. In South Carolina 
as well asr in Virginia, when the return of British citizens provoked 
outrages, the Governor—instead of bending every effort to sustain 
the laws—transgressed the treaty by ordering the newcomers to 
abandon their property and get out. The British also complained 
that the Jacksonborough act of confiscation was retroactive to 
July 4, 1776; and that houses and lands, initially Tory-owned, but 
which actually belonged to British merchants, not to Tories, when 
the Act was passed, were sold under it in 1784 without respect for 
the treaty’s guarantees. As for Georgia, the British Government 
succinctly alleged that: 

Laws and regulations similar to those which have passed in South Carolina exist 
in this State, with degrees of peculiar and manifest aggravation; the judges from 
the bench having declared that no suit shall be proceeded on, if brought by a British 
subject; while, on the other hand, they allow British subjects to be sued by their 
creditors. 


Among the Middle States, the treaty violations by New York 
were easily the worst. Jay admitted that the Trespass Act of 
March, 1783, which the Legislature was at such pains to continue 
in force against the well-founded objections of the liberals, was an 
early and odious infringement upon plain British rights. The 
British Government in 1786 spoke of it with especial indignation: 

By virtue of this law, actions to an enormous amount were immediately instituted 
against British subjects, who, relying implicitly on the treaty of peace and the faith 
of nations, were encouraged to remain in New York upon its evacuation for the 
purposes of collecting their debts, and settling or extending their commercial affairs; 
and in cases where those who had occupied the premises were not to be found, the 
demands were made on the lodger, the late servant, or the agent of these occupiers. 
These suits have been prosecuted with the utmost severity, and being determinable by 
juries of interested men ... it is no wonder that verdicts for exorbitant rents and 
damages have in every instance been found against the defendants . 68 


By the Legislature of January, 1784, a long series of infractions 
of the treaty was placed upon the statute books. One bill was 
framed to disfranchise loyalists, and was drawn in terms which 
made it affect persons guiltless of any real offense against the United 


58 in the prosecutions of the loyalists for occupancy of Whig premises, cutting 
timber, or other trespass, more than one million dollars was claimed in damages. 
Tones “Hist NY” II, 251-55; Flick, “Loyalism,” 159; Dip. Corr. of U. S., 1783-89. 
Ed. 1855, II, ‘581’ff., which gives in full Lord Carmarthen s very cogent list of 
the British grievances. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


650 


States. 59 A resolution was passed, calling on the Governors of 
the other twelve States to interchange lists of banished persons with 
each other and with New York, in order that no refugee might find 
a spot to rest upon American soil. Still another resolution was 
introduced declaring, quite gratuitously, that notwithstanding the 
recommendation of Congress, New York could not comply with 
the fifth article of the British treaty. 60 The confiscation of the 
estates owned by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was 
—simply because it held a royal charter—proposed, but was too 
plainly villainous to pass. Moreover, a bill called the Alienation bill, 
which would have at once expelled from the State all remaining 
loyalists, was prepared, and when it was not pushed forward with 
the energy the radicals thought proper, mass-meetings attested their 
indignation. 

New Jersey, which in 1781 had suspended the sale of confiscated 
estates, passed an act on December 16, 1783, to continue it. This, 
of course, was not a violation of the treaty, but simply a rebuff to 
the Congressional recommendation. Petitions condemning the harsh 
treatment the Tories were suffering in New York, and inviting 
them to come live peaceably among the tolerant inhabitants of New 
Jersey, found many signers in Amboy, Piscataway, New Brunswick, 
and a few other towns, and to these places the erstwhile loyalists 
went in troops. In Pennsylvania and Delaware the number of 
Tories was great, and that of the lukewarm even greater, so that 
after the treaty of peace loyalists and British subjects were leniently 
treated. The British Government, however, complained of the 
Pennsylvania act which for a short time, till the autumn of 1784, 
restrained the recovery of old debts. “Not only a uniform opposi¬ 
tion has been made to the payment of interest, but the lawyers, 
dreading the resentment of some of the most violent among their 
countrymen, have refused to engage in the recovery of these un¬ 
popular demands; and ... not one action for the payment of an 
old British debt has been prosecuted in this State.” In Maryland 


60 pmiltGn always spoke with special bitterness of the law depriving certain groups 
of the ballot and other civil rights, which, as he said, was “an attempt to transfer 
the sceptre from the hands of government to those of individuals, to arm one Dart of 
the community against another, to enact a civil war.” P C 01 

80 It must be remembered that New York’s Confiscation Act of 1770 had been 
peculiarly harsh. The Council of Revision had vetoed it because it was obscure 
and contradictory, convicted certain persons by name without a trial, tended to subiect 
loyal inhabitants to gross oppression, and was in part “repugnant to those olain and 
immutable laws of justice which no State can with honor throw off.” The Assembly 
repassed it over this veto 28 to 9 (Assembly Journal, 1779, i 02 ff); and now the State 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 651 


also, the moderates, after a wave of anti-loyalist feeling had swept 
the State in 1783, triumphed. Legislation embodying some objec¬ 
tionable features was opposed by Charles Carroll of Carrollton and 
Robert Goldsborough, and in 1786 there was nothing of which the 
British could complain save that, as in Virginia, they were not 
allowed freely to collect the pre-war debts owed them. 

As we should expect, the New Englanders, who since 1776 had 
been touched directly by the war along only the southern and Maine 
coasts, showed the most enlightened spirit. Early in 1784 a com¬ 
mittee of the Massachusetts House, headed by Samuel Adams, re¬ 
ported that no one who had borne arms against the United States, 
or had lent money to the enemy for war purposes, should ever be 
permitted to return to Massachusetts, but this view did not prevail. 
The State did no more than to confirm her previous confiscatory 
legislation, and to pass an act (November, 1784) outlawing the 
interest which had accrued on British debts from 1775 to 1783. 61 
New Hampshire, instead of making it easy for evicted loyalists to 
re-purchase their confiscated possessions, voted the spring of the 
same year a law for the speedy sale of the seized estates; but it did 
no more. Rhode Island’s laws interfering with the obligation of 
contracts were of course a violation of the treaty, but then a madness 
lay upon Rhode Island, and the British were far from being the 
worst sufferers. Indeed, the shore towns of New England soon 
began to realize that the peopling of Nova Scotia was raising up 
a rival on the fishing banks; and that the loyalists, if permitted to 
take up their homes among them, would have brought wealth in 
their hands. 

The passing away of wartime resentments, the awakening of a 
sentiment of justice and magnanimity, alone did much to break 
down these evil laws. Respect for the pledged word of the nation 
was a powerful influence; while the aggressive attitude of the 
British Government, which refused to evacuate the lake posts or 
pay for the negroes carried away until the United States fulfilled its 
treaty obligations, was an important factor in obtaining a reform. 
There is no question that the British very early infringed the 
treaty, but the American violations were so heavy that Jay said 


“The Massachusetts Legislature in the fall of 1785 repealed all legislation against 
Tories and refugees. See the Centmel November 19, 1785, for hostile comment; 
N V Packet Tanuarv 16. 1786. Lord Carmarthen’s complaint of treaty violations in 
1786 contained only o y ne couSt against a New England State-Massachusetts-and the 
New Englanders said that it was misstated. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, IX, 7-9. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


652 

he hardly thought it surprising or culpable in the English to retain 
the Northwestern posts. 62 In the fall of 1784 Monroe, during a 
tour to Montreal, Niagara, and Lake Erie, learned that the British 
meant to hold these posts until Virginia and New York, regarded 
as the most flagrant offenders, repealed their obnoxious laws. 63 In 
1785 Adams wrote from London that the American demands would 
not be met while there remained in force any State law suspending 
suits for recovering British debts. 64 In February, 1786, Lord 
Carmarthen sent Adams a detailed list of the offenses of the States, 
and when Congress received it, most of the allegations contained 
therein were found to be correct. The result was that Congress 
resolved, in vigorous language: 

that the Legislatures of the several States cannot of right pass any act or acts for 
interpreting, explaining, or construing a national treaty, or any part or clause of it; 
nor for restraining, limiting, or in any manner impeding, retarding, or counteracting 
the operation and execution of the same; for that on being constitutionally made, 
ratified, and published, they become in virtue of the Confederation, part of the law 
of the land, and are not only independent of the will and power of such Legislatures, 
but also binding and obligatory on them. 65 


With a copy of this resolution, Congress sent each State a request 
that it repeal its laws, if any, transgressing the treaty, and even if 
no repeal was necessary, pass a declaration that the treaty was the 
full law of the State. 

The two States whose assent to this request was most important 
and least probable were New York and Virginia. Already, in 1784, 
Hamilton in New York had made himself a champion of the posi¬ 
tion taken by Congress on the treaty. He had argued against the 
Trespass Act upon the ground, in part, that it was a violation of 
the treaty. It might be objected, he said, that Congress had no 
control over the internal affairs, the police power, of New York. 
Not at all; the authority of Congress was unquestionable. In 
memorable language, he maintained that “the sovereignty and in¬ 
dependence of the people began by a Federal act; that our external 
sovereignty is known only in the Union—that foreign nations only 
recognize it in the Union; that the Declaration of Independence was 
the fundamental constitution of every State, all of which was acceded 


62 Two early American violations, in New York and South Carolina, occurred simul- 

taneously, on March 17, 1783; one Pennsylvania violation on March 12 1783- but 

the British were already averse to evacuating the western posts, as Haldimand’s’ dis¬ 
patch of August 20, 1783, showed, and they violated the treaty of November 25 by 

S- eg !r 0eS ff T ° m Ne ^ 7 T ork - Dip ‘ Corr * of U - S> ’ 1 783-89, 1855 ed. f II, 642-44. 

63 R. H. Lee, “Letters,” II, 297-99. ’ * ■ 

64 Dip. Corr. of U. S., 1783-89, II, 500-01. Nor would the Maryland bank stock 
be recovered, nor American negroes paid for. 

65 This was widely publishe'd; N. Y. Packet, April 27, 1787. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 653 


to by the Convention of New York. . . .” Hence, Hamilton con¬ 
cluded that “Congress had complete sovereignty; that the Union 
was known and legalized in the Constitution of New York previous 
to the Confederation, and that the first act of the State government 
accepted it as a fundamental law; from which reflections we are 
taught to respect the sovereignty of the Union, and to consider its 
constitutional powers as not controllable by any State.” 66 The 
Confederation was an abridgement of that sovereign power, which 
gave to Congress the full power of making war, peace, and treaties, 
and the exclusive power to do so; this power must be respected. 
For the general public Hamilton stated his arguments in the essays 
of Phocion, which were read in all parts of America. As he said 
of his original pamphlet, “the force of plain truth carried it along 
the stream of prejudice, and the principles it held out gained ground 
in spite of the opposition of those who were too angry or too much 
interested to be convinced.” Chancellor Kent, then a young man, 
wrote long after that no hasty production of the press ever had 
a truer success, and that “the rising generation readily imbibed those 
sentiments of temperate civil liberty and of sound constitutional 
law, which Hamilton had so clearly taught.” 

In Virginia also the constitutional powers of Congress found 
powerful defenders. The Legislature of that State had, like New 
York’s, resolved in 1784 that it could not comply with the treaty. 
That is, it had declared that it had “no inclination to interfere with 


the power of making treaties with foreign nations, which the Con¬ 
federation hath wisely vested in Congress; but it is conceived that a 
just regard to the national honor and interest of the citizens of this 
Commonwealth, obliges the Assembly to withhold their cooperation 
in the complete fulfillment of the said treaty.” In the Senate a 
remonstrance against this was signed by seven men, Henry Lee, 


William Lee, Burwell Bassett, John Brown, Nathaniel Harrison, and 
William Fitzhugh, who believed Virginia bound in honor to execpte 
the treaty. 67 Nearly all the great men of the State—Madison, 

«« But the State government flatly refused to regard the national treaty-making 
power as “not controllable.” The tw 9 houses resolved in the spring of 1784 That 
while this Legislature entertain the highest sense of national honor, of the sanction 
of treaties, and of the deference which is due the advice of the United States in 
Congress assembled, they find it inconsistent with their duty to comply with the 
recommendation of the said United States, on the subject matter of the fifth article 

° f « 7 t Md Sa /oM^na/ m %1y tr 2T y u°8V Pe They further argued that ’as for 4 the slaves taken 
fc 


thought would certainly pay 
fulfill the treaty. 


British Government, which Franklin 
or them;" and that in any event, it was politic to 


654 THE AMERICAN STATES 

George Mason, Washington, Monroe (who was not altogether firm), 
and young John Marshall—were for a repeal of the laws contra¬ 
vening the treaty. R. H. Lee, who thought both nations to blame, 
wrote in 1785 that it was the peculiar duty of a republic to square 
its conduct with the principles of virtue. The chief influence in the 
opposite scale was that of Patrick Henry, but Madison believed that 
if Henry could be defeated on the issue of full religious freedom, 
he could be defeated on this. In the end, however, the view that 
the treaty was absolutely binding upon the States was beaten in 
both Virginia and New York, under circumstances which accentu¬ 
ated the check to federalist principles. 

This rebuff to Congress came in both States during 1787. Hamil¬ 
ton, now thirty years old, was still fighting sturdily in New York for 
the principles he had laid down in 1784, and entered the Legislature 
which met in January with the determination to vindicate them. His 
measure to abrogate all laws conflicting with the treaty he supported 
by a careful speech. No other State, he argued, had so much to gain 
as New York from a strict observance of the treaty. The British 
retention of the western posts, by its injury to trade and in other 
ways, cost the inhabitants of the State £100,000 a year. 68 Some 
men were apprehensive that the bill would restore confiscated estates, 
and while he was sure it would not, he was willing, if they insisted, 
to add a provision guarding against any such effect. If New York, 
so much concerned in enforcing the treaty, failed to pass the general 
repeal asked by Congress, other States very little interested could 
point to her stubbornness as a reason for declining. Three years 
earlier, he had compared the course of the Americans in making a 
solemn national treaty and then evading it by State laws to the 
treachery of the Roman general who, having promised Antiochus to 
restore half his vessels, sawed them in two before their delivery, and 
of the Platseans, who, having promised the Thebans to give up their 
prisoners, killed them and restored them dead. He repeated again 
that the world had its eyes upon America, and looked to it for an 
exemplification of the spirit of liberty working in practical affairs; 
the habits of nations, like those of men, were formed in infancy and 
youth, and it was important to habituate the American States to 


68 New York was so eager in 1783 to lay hands upon these posts that it in¬ 
structed Hamilton, then in Congress, that it wished them garrisoned by New York 
troops. Hamilton, believing that Continental troops should be used, disregarded these 
instructions; Hamilton, “Hist. Rep.,” II, 554 if. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 655 


rectitude and tolerance. These arguments swayed the House, but 
the bill died in the upper chamber. 

In Virginia an effort to repeal the anti-debt laws violating the 
treaty was made in the legislative session of the winter of 1784-85, 
and failed only, as has been noted, by the fact that the sudden freez¬ 
ing of the James prevented the return of certain legislators and the 
fulfillment of all legal forms before adjournment. 69 At the session 
of 1785-86 another effort at repeal was beaten by direct and bitter 
opposition. During the debates, Madison tells us, no pains were 
spared to abuse the treaty by attacks upon Congress, the New Eng¬ 
land States, and John Adams and its other negotiators. At the 
autumn meeting of the Legislature in 1787 George Mason, ably 
seconded by George Nicholas, took up the request of Congress 
regarding it. On November 17 the committee of the whole resolved 
that all laws repugnant to it ought to be repealed, but that the 
operation of the repeal should be suspended until the executive was 
informed by Congress that the other States of the Union had passed 
similar acts of compliance. Patrick Henry, in his dissatisfaction 
proposed that the annulment of the laws be suspended, not until all 
the other States had complied with the treaty, but until Great Britain 
did so. His amendment, and another which would have postponed 
the payment of debts to British subjects until they could be paid in 
a time and manner suited to “the exhausted situation of this Com¬ 
monwealth,” were happily defeated. The resolution was passed, and 
a committee brought in a bill which repealed every part of the 
statutes conflicting with the peace treaty. 

It was unfortunate enough that this bill contained a clause keeping 
it ineffective until Congress should inform the Governor that all 
other States had made it possible for British creditors to recover 
their debts; but still further to emasculate it, Patrick Henry and 
his associates brought forward the same amendment that had failed, 
by a majority of 33, when the mere resolution was under considera¬ 
tion—the amendment that the law should not take effect until Eng- 


89 The subject had been discussed for a year. A member of Congress wrote to a 
Virginia legislator, December io, 1783: “I am, myself, principled against refugees 
and British debts. I think the former will make wretched Republicans, and to the 
latter, in my opinion, all just title has been forfeited. But let us see what the faith 
of America as a nation, and her interests as a people, require, and leaving all prejudice 
against those people aside, act in conformity thereto. Our conduct, or rather the 
conduct of some very wild and unthinking people scattered throughout the United 
States, has hurt us much in the eyes of all Europe, where that article in favor of 
refugees is considered very humiliating to Great Britain and such as our honor and 
interest call on us to explain and adhere to liberally (Md Journal, January 
2, 1784.) See A. C. McLaughlin, “Western Posts and Br. Debts, Am. Hist. Assn. 
Reports, 1894. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


656 

land had restored the northwestern posts and the runaway slaves or 
their equivalent. Virginia legislatures were always mercurial bodies. 
From some cause, probably either an outburst of popular sentiment 
or an outburst of Henry’s oratory, the Assembly suddenly changed 
front, and, passing the amendment by a majority of 49, virtually 
destroyed the law. 70 

V. State Indifference to Congress 

Congress had now failed to win from the States an acknowledg¬ 
ment of its power to make a valid treaty of peace, even as it had 
failed during the war to obtain from them the money and men sorely 
needed, and as it had failed since the war to wring from them a 
dependable revenue or the partial control of American commerce. 
Its humiliation was complete. It was plain that the only hope for a 
vigorous national government lay in a wholly new Constitution. 

One indication of a declining respect for Congress, it must be 
noted, had lain in the steady diminution after the Revolution of the 
influence and worth of its personnel. This diminution had unfor¬ 
tunately begun to be marked soon after the adoption of the Articles 
of Confederation. The States in many instances found their ablest 
men reluctant to enter the membership of a body which had so little 
real power, while some deliberately elected mediocre men when they 
might with a little trouble have prevailed upon others to accept. As 
Hamilton noted, each State in order to promote its internal pros¬ 
perity tried to place its best men in its own offices. When they had 
made their choice of delegates, the delegates often considered their 
private affairs more important than those of Congress, and devoted 
themselves so little to public business that Congress found it difficult 
to obtain a quorum. The Articles provided that no State could 
cast a vote unless represented by two or more delegates, and that 
on important questions the assent of nine States was required. Upon 
the impressive and momentous day when Washington resigned his 
commission and received the thanks of Congress (December 23, 
1783), the ceremony was preceded by the passage of resolutions, 
proposed by Williamson of North Carolina and seconded by Jeffer¬ 
son, urging upon the Governors of six States that the safety and 
credit of the Union required the immediate attendance of their dele- 

T0 Journals, 50 ff.; Henry, “Henry,” II, 325-26; Beveridge, “Marshall,” I, Ch. 6. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 657 

gates. A few months later, on the anniversary of Lexington, Con¬ 
gress adopted a long formal complaint that several States were 
represented by two delegates only. Under these circumstances, 
almost complete unanimity was required in conducting the more 
important transactions. Were all the States represented by two men 
each, five of the twenty-six delegates might tie an equal number of 
State votes, and defeat any important measure. The case was much 
worse when several States were represented by nobody. “Of eleven 
States now on the floor of Congress, nine being represented by only 
two members from each, it is in the power of three out of the twenty- 
five, making one-eighth of the whole, to negative such a measure.” 

Complaints continued to emanate from Congress. On August 7, 
1785, it was pointed out that many States were still either unrepre¬ 
sented, or represented by only two men, and it was voted that once 
a month the Secretary should send the Legislatures a list of the States 
represented and unrepresented, and of the members from each. But 
this prodding was fruitless. Between October, 1785, and the follow¬ 
ing April, there were only three days when nine States were on the 
floor. Rufus King, saying that it was a farce to continue waiting, 
proposed an ultimatum—that Congress should resolve upon adjourn¬ 
ment sine die if the situation did not mend within a given time. 71 

From the first Monday in November, 1784, to July 29, 1785, the 
attendance in Congress is noted in the journal 169 times. The best- 
represented States in this period were Virginia (delegates present 162 
times), Massachusetts (152), and New York and South Carolina 
(146 each). Five States were represented on from 30 (Delaware) 
to 115 (Maryland) occasions each. On only six occasions were as 
many as twelve States represented at once, while on forty occasions 
there were less than nine on the floor. As King said, the States cared 
too little about the Union to maintain their delegations, and men 
from whom a genuine interest might have been expected cared little 
more. Oliver Ellsworth, public-spirited and conscientious, was a 
delegate for six years, but he went to Philadelphia only five times in 
all, and his total service in Congress aggregated only about eighteen 
months. In 1786 Congress debated whether a member had the right 
to withdraw without permission from Congress or his State. Such a 
withdrawal often meant that a State quite dropped out of the list of 
those voting. Yet New York, Virginia, and Maryland affirmed the 

71 King, “Life and Corr.,” I, 133 - 34 - 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


658 

absolute right of withdrawal, and four other States—New Hampshire, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Georgia—were divided. Eleven 
men voted that members had the right, and eighteen that they had 
not. 72 

The early Congresses included the best talent of the nation that 
was not actively busied in the field, in the diplomatic service, or in 
the Governors’ chairs. But the later Congresses were Congresses of 
small men. It is sufficient to compare the Congress of. 1774-75 with 
that which we find sitting in 1782, and the latter with the Congress 
of 1786. The States sent to the first a galaxy which included the 
two Adamses, Sherman and Deane, Jay and Duane, Galloway, Caesar 
Rodney, McKean, Samuel Chase, Washington, Patrick Henry, R. H. 
Lee, and the two Rutledges. In the Congress sitting in 1782 there 
was only a handful of delegates of such eminence—Hamilton, Charles 
Carroll, Madison, Lee, McKean, Duane, and Rutledge. 73 The re¬ 
mainder were men of merely local reputation—men like Gilman and 
Livermore of New Hampshire, Wolcott and Huntington of Con¬ 
necticut, l’Hommedieu of New York, Clymer of Pennsylvania, Han¬ 
son of Maryland, Blount and Nash of North Carolina, and Telfair 
and Few of Georgia. Four years later a further decline was seen. 
The choice of such men reflected more than carelessness in the State 
Legislatures—it reflected the progress in them of a spirit of un¬ 
willingness to make Congress a body of great collective wisdom and 
energy. Haring of New York, for example, Manning of Rhode 
Island, and Pettit of Pennsylvania were well known to be enemies 
to a strong central government. 74 

Not merely by withholding consent to the proposals of Congress, 
and refusing to let it exert general powers, did the States show their 
want of national spirit. They showed it also by the vigor and self- 
confidence with which they pursued measures of their own infringing 
on the proper field of Congress. Madison’s rhetorical questions in 
the Constitutional Convention showed how deeply this hurt men like 
himself. “Has not Georgia, in direct violation of the Constitution, 
made war with the Indians and concluded treaties? Have not Vir¬ 
ginia and Maryland entered into a partial compact? Have not Penn- 

72 N. C. State Records, XVII, 497; Brown’s “Ellsworth,” 53-54. 

78 Hamilton in 1780 lamented the diffident, timid air shown by the Congress in its 
relations with the States, and its want of tact in dealing with the army; “Works,” 
I, 227-28. 

71 Worthington C. Ford notes (Journals Cont. Cong. IV, 8) that “In civil matters 
the formation of State governments under Constitutions prepared the way [in 1776] 
for a decline in the energy and influence of the Continental Congress.” 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 659 

sylvania and New Jersey regulated the bounds of the Delaware? 
Has not the State of Massachusetts at this time a considerable body 
of troops in pay? Has not Congress been obliged to pass a con¬ 
ciliatory act, in support of a decision of their Federal Court, between 
Connecticut and Pennsylvania, instead of having the power of carry¬ 
ing into effect the judgment of their own court?” 

For Georgia to make war and conclude treaties was nothing un¬ 
usual. The Constitutions of a number of States gave their govern¬ 
ments just these powers. When Congress sent commissioners to 
negotiate the treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Six Nations, many 
difficulties were deliberately thrown in their way by New York, and 
the agents had to exert much firmness and perseverance to overcome 
them. Congress was vested by the Articles with the power of regu¬ 
lating American relations with the Indians, but several States illegally 
insisted upon doing the same in their own fields; and so fixed did the 
practice become that one of Washington’s first energetic acts as 
President was to call a halt upon Georgia’s brazen violation of the 
Constitution in continuing it. 75 

Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania borrowed 
or tried to borrow money abroad exactly as if they were sovereign 
nations; and after the war Maryland negotiated herself for the recov¬ 
ery of her stock in the Bank of England, instead of entrusting the 
negotiation to the American Minister, John Adams. Virginia’s diplo¬ 
matic activities became so extensive that the legislature provided for 
a clerk of foreign correspondence. Her legislature also ratified the 
peace treaty. When Patrick Henry was negotiating with Spain in 
1778 for Spanish approval of the erection of a fort on the Virginia 
border, he promised from Virginia in return “the gratitude of this 
free and independent country, the trade in any or all its valuable 
productions, and the friendship of its warlike inhabitants.” 76 Nine 
States, from Massachusetts on the north to South Carolina on the 
south, organized their own navies, and some States established their 
own systems of privateering. Several States fitted out their own 
armies, and used them for State purposes. In the instance of George 
Rogers Clark, Virginia waged a campaign to enlarge her own bounds 

75 R. H. Lee, “Letters,” II, 297-99. As an example of the uncertainty of Con¬ 
gress as to its own powers, see Sparks, “Letters to Washington, IV, 68-69. 

78 “Another consequence of this disordered state of things was the negotiation of 
commercial leagues, growing out of geographical causes, between the States of New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania, and of Maryland and Virginia, in direct contravention of 
the sixth article of the Confederation.” Hamilton, “Hist. Rep..” Ill, 148. 


66 o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


without the knowledge of Congress; and she paid all the immediate 
expenses of the expedition herself, though she later insisted upon 
repayment by Congress. The ill-starred descent of the Massachu¬ 
setts army in 1779 upon the Penobscot forts was followed by a long 
wrangle before Congress, which had not authorized it, would pay 
the bills. Much of the war in the South, in the early part of the 
Revolution, was waged without the knowledge or direction of Con¬ 
gress. 77 

In all, the view that the United States in Congress assembled con¬ 
stituted a nation, vested with all the attributes of sovereignty, had 
much less currency from 1776 to 1787 than might be inferred from 
the writings of statesmen like Hamilton, Madison, and Washington. 
The view was very general that Congress was simply a meeting of 
the ambassadors of thirteen independent and sovereign, but leagued, 
nations. Congress, said Randolph, was “a mere diplomatic body . . . 
always obsequious to the views of the States”; it is, said Adams, 
“not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, but only 
a diplomatic assembly.” The New York merchants, petitioning for 
the impost plan, and praising Congress as the chain and soul of the 
nation, nevertheless asserted: “Our confederacy is formed of thir¬ 
teen independent republics. . . 78 

When individual delegates had any quarrel with Congress as a 
body, they always fell back upon their diplomatic privileges, insist¬ 
ing that they were responsible only to their own States. In April, 
1778, Dr. Thomas Burke expressed himself with heat upon some 
question, and then broke the quorum of Congress by unceremoniously 
withdrawing. On being sent for, he spoke so violently that Congress 
declared him in contempt of its dignity. Burke thereupon asserted 
that Congress was not the judge of his conduct, but North Carolina, 
and he submitted the case to North Carolina, whose Legislature of 
course sustained him. 79 The Continental government was regarded 
as a “foreign” government by some State Rights supporters, and 
the epithet was actually applied to it in the Massachusetts Legis¬ 
lature. 80 This view so impressed itself upon the French that in 
1781, some months before Yorktown, it was suggested at the French 
court that the thirteen States should send thirteen agents or em- 

TT Van Tyne, Amer. Hist . Review, XII, 539-41. 

78 N. Y. Packet, March 7, 1785. Even the government of Connecticut spoke of that 
State as a republic. 

79 N. C. State Records, XIII, Introduction. 

80 Austin, “Gerry,” I, 407-15; 495-99. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 661 


bassies to attend the congress at Vienna, in order to make peace 
with Great Britain. Vergennes was hastily informed that this would 
be a violation of the Articles, and that Congress would not consent 
to have America regarded as a baker’s dozen of nations. 81 

In 1785 Congress seemed to Washington a nugatory body, the 
Confederation little more than a shadow without substance, and the 
nation steadily descending from its once high vantage point “into 
the vale of confusion and darkness.” During this and the following 
year many men within and outside Congress still cherished the hope 
that by amendments to the Articles the body might be given a 
sufficient dignity and authority. Governor Bowdoin, in his message 
to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1785, proposed a Continental 
convention—of which there had been much talk in 1784—to draw 
up a compact vesting in Congress “All the powers necessary to pre¬ 
serve the Union, to manage the general concerns of it, and promote 
its common interest”; the States to confirm the compact. In re¬ 
sponse, the Legislature urged Congress to call a convention of all 
the States, “to revise the Confederation, and report to Congress how 
far it may be necessary, in their opinion, to alter or enlarge the 
same, in order to secure and perpetuate the primary objects of the 
Union.” Bowdoin was requested to send a letter on this subject, 
together with a copy of a circular to all the States, to Congress. 
However, the three Massachusetts delegates, Gerry, Holton, and 
King, audaciously withheld the letter and circular from Congress, 
submitting a number of objections to Bowdoin. Even admitting the 
necessity of vesting more power in Congress, they asked, should the 
powers not be temporary, would it be wise to make amendments in 
any fashion not prescribed by the Confederation, and, if a con¬ 
vention were called, ought it not to be restricted to certain definite 
ends? They feared, they added, that a convention would produce 
“an exertion of the friends of aristocracy” for an aristocratic gov¬ 
ernment. 82 

This is not the place to rehearse the familiar story of the calling 
of the Federal Convention, and its triumphant execution of a momen¬ 
tous task. The basic question facing this Convention was the ques¬ 
tion of how the new Federal Government should give effect to its 
authority in the fields assigned to it. Should it operate through the 

81 Adams, “Works,” VII, 45 °- 5 2 - 

82 Hamilton, “Hist. Rep.,” Ill, i 35 “- 


662 


THE AMERICAN STATES 

State governments, trying to impel them to carry out its will?—the 
principle upon which some other modern confederacies have rested. 
Or should it act upon men, not States, and legislate directly for its 
own citizens? The Convention was too wise to hesitate long for an 
answer. The advocates of a coercive clause were quickly overthrown. 
Madison in a letter to Jefferson following the adjournment of the 
Convention explained its action with his characteristic succinctness. 
“It was generally agreed/’ he said, “that the objects of the Union 
could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a 
confederation of sovereign States. A voluntary observance of the 
Federal law by all the members could never be hoped for. A com¬ 
pulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it 
could, involved equal calamities to the innocent and the guilty, the 
necessity of a military force, both obnoxious and dangerous, and, 
in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war than the admin¬ 
istration of a regular government. Hence was embraced the alterna¬ 
tive of a government which, instead of operating on the States, should 
operate without their intervention on the individuals composing 
them; and hence the change in the principle and proportion of 
representation.” 83 

Had the Convention made the error of writing into the Constitu¬ 
tion the principle of “compulsive observance” of the Federal will 
by the States, the nation would quickly have faced that civil strife 
of which Madison spoke. Instead, the basic assumption was made 
that while there were two sovereignties, no State enactment was for 
a moment valid if it conflicted with the Federal Constitution or the 
Federal statutes passed in accordance with the Constitution. Federal 
laws were to be enforceable throughout the whole land, peaceably 
but firmly and perfectly, by the judicial machinery of the whole 
land. State laws, if unconstitutional, were to be nullified not by 
Federal threats against the State capitals, not by the march of troops, 
but by the simple action of the State and Federal judges, sitting 
quietly on their benches, in ignoring them. 

Not only the nation, but the States, took a new birth from the 
ratification of the Federal Constitution. They were instantly and 
utterly cut off from a whole field of activities in which they had no 
proper function, and compelled to concentrate their energies upon 

83 “Letters,” Ed., 1865, I, 344. See A. C-. McLaughlin, “Confederation and Con¬ 
stitution,” Ch. 15. 


THE RELATIONS OF THE STATES WITH CONGRESS 663 

Is V> 

true State questions. We have shown that their record with regard 
to purely domestic problems was upon the whole good, not bad. 
They had made fairly consistent progress in constitutional, financial, 
humanitarian, and administrative paths, and they could begin the 
new era with justified self-confidence and hope. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 

In less than a generation, 1760-1790, the compact belt of settle¬ 
ment which flanked the Atlantic coast approximately doubled in area. 
At the beginning of this period there were perhaps 1,500,000 people 
in the colonies, and at its close the United States held almost 4,000,- 
000. The former date found the white population confined to the 
southeastern parts of New York and Pennsylvania, and about half 
of the present area of North Carolina and Virginia; in North Caro¬ 
lina it stretched a narrow finger of settlement up the Wateree only 
as far as Camden, and in Georgia another finger up the Savannah 
as far as Augusta. Considerable portions of even J^Iassachusetts, 
New Jersey, and Maryland remained to be settled.' From Albany, 
from Lancaster, and from Hillsborough in North Carolina the 
traveler might strike west and plunge immediately into the primeval 
forest, wholly untouched by man. But despite the interruption of 
two wars, immigration, the fecundity of the people, and the irresis¬ 
tible call of the west wrought their changes with amazing rapidity. 
‘By 1790 the tide of population had covered all of what is now 
Virginia, the two Carolinas, New York southeast of Fort Stanwix, 
and the lower half of Pennsylvania, where it was spilling over into 
Ohio. Outposts of settlement had been thrown forward into central 
Tennessee, and in Kentucky an irregular patch of colonization was 
fast covering the middle part of the State.^ 

Even by 1791 the population of what we may strictly call the 
West remained small, but it was rapidly increasing. Of the 4,000,000 
Americans, not more than 150,000 dwelt beyond the watershed of 
the Alleghenies. 2 What is now Tennessee then contained at the 
utmost 60,000 people; a few of them in the Mero or Nashville 

1 The first census gave the United States 3,929,000 people. Consult W. S. Rossiter, 
“A Century of Population Growth in the United States.” There is an excellent map in 
E. B. Greene’s ‘‘The Foundations of American Nationality,” 530, showing population 
in 1790. 

2 Channing, III, 528, says 125,000 at the utmost in 1790; but this may represent too 
small an allowance for the Tennessee country. An imperfect return by the Governor 
in 1791, with five districts missing, gave 35.691 people in Tennessee: see Winter- 
botham’s “United States,” III, 234. 


664 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 


66s 

district, but most of them in the east, adjoining the Carolina line. 
The Kentucky country, then part of Virginia, had 73,677 people, 
of whom there were 200 in the hamlet of Louisville and 844 in' 
Lexington. The settlement of Ohio did not begin in earnest until 
1788, when Marietta and Cincinnati were founded. However, the 
western reaches were filling up during Washington’s first administra¬ 
tion at an accelerating pace. The settlers in Kentucky doubled in 
numbers in a half dozen years following 1784. By every trail and 
pass new families were coming. The four or five thousand people 
in a thin fringe along the north bank of the Ohio were the advance 
corps of an army that within a few years was to move north till the 
whole State was sown with farms and towns. 


< 


I. Settlement of the West 


. The process of planning new commonwealths in the West had 
begun long before the Revolution. Even after the royal proclamation 
of 1763 forbidding settlement be/ond the Appalachian watershed, the 
British government was not hostile to a well-regulated colonization 
of new lands. Shelburne, the author of the proclamation, knew 
that the West was certain to be inundated by white emigrants, and 
took the side of other intelligent British statesmen who wanted 
settlement encouraged as fast as Indian titles could be purchased and 
the good will of the red men secured. 3 Unfortunately, there was 
another school of British polticians—the Rockingham Ministry of 
1765 was dominated by it—which wished the trans-Allegheny region 
set apart as a permanent Indian reservation, from which white land- 
hunters should be excluded. Its policy was not adopted, but it was 
able to prevent the actual application of the opposite plan. Land 
speculation was a fever of the day, in which most active Americans 
desired to participate. Many schemes for the establishment of a 
fourteenth Colony were broached before 1776, some American, some 
Anglo-American, but none reached fruition. 4 

8 TTnr thr renort on western affairs upon which Shelburne founded his; recommenda- 
tion^or^tliis^roclamathfnt^ee Shortt* and Doughty “^-titutional Documents 
Canada” Q7 A discussion of the proclamation and the policy will be found in. C. W. 

s‘c! p i “The 

New Regime, 1765-67,” offers materials for a full understanding of the West in 

Br i t i S i 1 r franklin’s interest in settling the West by British colonists, urged as early as 
F ™L k ilo VJ^h Frlitinn III v;8. The beginnings of Anglo-American discus- 
sun^’ <^ e t he°subje^:t 1 ^are |treatecf i^H. Alden, g ”Ne W g Governments West of the 
Alleghenies Before 1780.” 


666 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


A number of wealthy and influential Virginians immediately after 
the Seven Years’ War planned a colony occupying a tract of ten and 
a half million acres bordering the Mississippi in what is now Illinois, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee, and in 1763 petitioned the Crown for a 
grant. Washington and five of the Lees were included. 5 But the 
Crow£, which did not want to strengthen Virginia’s claim to a region 
that it regarded as imperial territory, refused. Later, General 
Phineas Lyman of Connecticut and certain military associates had 
a plan for a series of colonies along the Mississippi. 6 Still more 
important was the scheme for a colony in the Illinois country with 
which George Croghan’s name is identified. 7 The ultimate partici¬ 
pants included Sir William Johnson, Governor William Franklin, 
Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Galloway, and men of prominence in the 
Middle Colonies. Shelburne discussed the project with Benjamin 
Franklin, and drafted a famous memorandum in which he proposed 
the establishment of colonies at Detroit, in the Illinois country, and 
on the lower Mississippi. But a new Ministry came into power 
in 1768, Lord Hillsborough began his disastrous administration of 
the Provinces, and these sensible plans perished forthwith. 8 Still 
another proposal which progressed almost to success was that for the 
Vandalia Colony, comprising most of what is now West Virginia 
and a part of Kentucky, the chief promoter of which was Samuel 
Wharton of Philadelphia. The Board of Trade and Plantations went 
so far in 1773 as to approve the grant asked for, and had it not been 
for the Revolution, the formal transfer might soon have followed. 9 

The actual creation of the Vandalia Colony would have produced 
a clash between Virginia and the Crown, for the Virginians on the 
basis of their Charter claimed all this region. The land speculations 
of Governor Dunmore and other influential men of the Province, 
with the uncontrollable push of Virginia settlers into the west, at 
this juncture brought on Lord Dunmore’s War with the Indians. 10 
The Virginia troops, mustered the summer of 1774 under the Gov- 


® The petition and other documents are printed in Alvord and Carter. “The Critical 
Period, 19 ff. 

6 Alvord and Carter, “The New Regime,” 260 ff. 

• 7 £ ee £‘ T ‘ Votwiler’s “George Croghan and the Westward Movement, 1741-1782,” 
in Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., 1922. 

8 T P ocun ie nts illustrating Hillsborough’s policy are printed in N. Y. Col. Docs., 
VIII, 19 ff. ' 

9 F. J. Turner, “Western State Making in the Revolutionary . Era,” Amer. Hist Re¬ 
view, I, 70. 

10 Dunmore’s War is treated in Roosevelt’s “Winning of the West,” I, ch 8; 
Archibald Henderson s ‘Conquest of the Old Southwest,” 196 ff.; and R. G. Thwaites 
and L. P. Kellogg, Documentary History of Dunmore’s War.” 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 667 

ernor and Andrew Lewis, really f(}ught their campaign in defiance 
of imperial regulations, and in defence of Virginia’s title to the 
western country; and their victory over the savages at the battle of 
the Great Kanawha opened up the tracts south of the Ohio to the 
migration of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians. It also made 
possible a new and quite irregular attempt to found a colony in 
Kentucky. Ten years earlier Daniel Boone, a North Carolina 
frontiersman, had undertaken an exploring expedition into Ken¬ 
tucky in behalf of a group formed by Richard Henderson, a scion 
of an aristocratic Virginia family which had come to North Carolina 
for its rich and cheap lands. In the months of peace following 
Lord Dunmore’s War, Judge Henderson established the Transyl¬ 
vania Company, and for the sum of £10,000 sterling in money and 
goods, bought from the Cherokees the region bounded by the Ohio, 
Kentucky, and Cumberland Rivers. He intended to form a pro¬ 
prietary Colony under the crown there, and from the four distinct 
settlements which the region contained he called together a conven¬ 
tion to draft a compact with the proprietors. But the royal 
governors of Virginia and North Carolina issued proclamations 
denouncing his enterprise, and when the Virginians took their 
government into their own hands, they promptly annulled Hender¬ 
son’s title. The plan for Transylvania died, and when the settlers 
sent delegates to the Virginia Provincial Convention, the county of 
Kentucky was born in its place. 11 

^Meanwhile, the region later called Tennessee received its first 
large body of settlers during the sixties.^ Defying the royal procla¬ 
mation, late in the decade many Virgiriia and North Carolina fami¬ 
lies pushed into the fertile valley of the Holston River, where they 
could squat upon land which did not cost even entry fees. The 
rebellion of the Regulators and their defeat at the Alamance sent a 
fresh tide across the mountains. James Robertson led a vanguard 
of 16 families to the Watauga Valley in 1771, an d literally thousands 
followed; we are told that one church congregation in the Regula¬ 
tors’ district was reduced from 606 to 14 members. A convention 
of the Watauga settlers was held, and drew up articles of association 
which led Governor Dunmore to declare that they had “to all intents 
and purposes, erected themselves into, though an inconsiderable, 
yet a separate state.” Governor Martin of North Carolina called 

11 Henderson, “Conquest of the Old Southwest,” ch. 15; G. W. Ranch’s “Boones- 
borough” in the Filson Club Publications. 


668 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


upon them to return immediately, but they ignored him and adopted 
the laws of Virginia as their own. Thus affairs stood when the 
Revolution broke out. 12 

The close of the Revolution saw the title to the Northwest, thanks 
principally to the expedition of George Rogers Clark, placed in 
American hands^It saw also the safety of the settlers in the Ken¬ 
tucky and Tennessee country fairly assured, for the time being, by 
successful campaigns undertaken against the Cherokees in 1776 and 
1781, and the Chickamaugas in 1779. 13 Ji-The idea of regional 
autonomy had been greatly strengthened 15 y the Revolution. It had 
been a rebellion against a distant authority in behalf of a greater 
self-government. At the very beginning of the war the inhabitants 
of the region about the headwaters of the Ohio, including the site 
of Pittsburgh, had petitioned Congress asking that it be made inde¬ 
pendent as Westsylvania, “the fourteenth Province of the American 
Confederacy.” Pennsylvania and Virginia were quarreling over this 
district, but the people wanted to be governed neither from Phila¬ 
delphia nor Williamsburg. 14 Congress naturally refused to offend 
either State by acting. Now, immediately after the peace with 
England, vigorous movements for new States developed in both the 
Kentucky and Tennessee country. 

^The Watauga and Holston settlers had defied the North Carolina 
Government when it was in royal hands, and now they defied it in 
American hands. In a convention held in August, 1784, they formed 
an association, and the following December adopted a temporary 
Constitution and gave their commonwealth the name of Frankland,- 
later changed to Franklin^ John Sevier was chosen Governor, and 
when next spring the North Carolina authorities inquired into the 
secession of these four western counties, he wrote a defiant letter 
stating that the Tennesseeans had become convinced that they were 
being altogether disregarded by North Carolina, and were acting 
from “necessity and self-preservation” in setting up a sovereign 
State. This was not true, for the North Carolina legislature had 
just made the four western counties into the District of Washington, 

12 See Henderson, op. cit., ch. 13; Martin’s proclamation is in the N. C. Col. Rees., 
IX, 825; for a treatment of the Watauga Association, see J. W. Caldwell, “Const. 
Hist, of Tennessee.” 

18 Channing, III, 361 note, refuses to recognize Clark’s conquest as a decisive factor 
in Great Britain’s determination to relinquish the Northwest. For a description of the 
Indian tribes south of the Ohio, see Tenn. Hist. Magazine, I, 21 ff. 

14 The Westsylvania Memorial is in Cummins, “Hist, of Washington County, Pa.,” 
187. 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 


669 


with a judiciary and a brigadier-general to organize their defense. 
Nevertheless, the settlers did suffer manifold difficulties in obtaining 
needed laws, justice on appeal, prompt action in the face of Indian 
threats, and fair consideration of economic question. Much farther 
to the west the Nashville region had received its first settlers in 1780, 
a swarm from the parent hive on the Watauga, who under the leader¬ 
ship of James Robertson beat back the savages and planted one 
hamlet after another. They were so completely unprotected by 
North Carolina or the United States, and so hard hit by the closing 
of the Mississippi, that in 1788 they made overtures to the Spanish 
authorities for an alliance or annexation. For a time Sevier and 
his Franklin followers maintained their position. A Constitution, 
based on North Carolina’s, was adopted the fall of 1785. But the 
infant “State” was weakened by internal dissensions, and by the 
combined firmness and moderation of the North Carolina authorities. 
Governors Caswell and Joseph Martin insisted upon complete sub¬ 
mission to the laws of North Carolina, and by the end of 1787 the 
secessionist movement was dead. 15 

£ Greater strength was manifested by the struggle for separation 
occurring at the same time in the Kentucky country immediately to 
the north. Here too the settlers found the capital at Richmond 
too far distant, and believed their interests were neglected. As early 
as May, 1780, nearly 700 inhabitants signed a memorial to Congress 
asking it to form them into a separate State, But the procedure of 
the majority was as law-abiding and moderate as that of the Ten¬ 
nesseeans was arbitrary and illegal. In 1784, under the menace of 
an Indian attack, a convention was held at Danville to consider 
measures for repulsing it, and found that no man in Kentucky was 
empowered to mobilize the militia for an immediate offensive. 
Chafing under this and other hardships, the settlers determined to 
ask Virginia to grant them the right to organize as a new State. 16 
Another convention at the close of the year, to which delegates were 
elected by the military companies, adopted an address to the Ken¬ 
tuckians which gave seven reasons for separation. The people had no 
agency with authority to embody the militia, and none able to execute 
the laws; they were ignorant of many Virginia statutes until long 
after their passage; they could not prosecute suits in the Court of 


M G. H. Alden, “The State of Franklin,” Amer Hist. Review, VIII.. 
i«r. m. Me Elroy, “Kentucky in the Nation’s History,” gives the history of the 
movement for separation. 


THE AMERICAN ST A TES 


670 

Appeals at Richmond without great loss; the cost of participation in 
the distant Virginia government was excessive; and their commercial 
interests could never correspond with Virginia’s. A third conven¬ 
tion in August, 1785, sent an address to the Virginia Assembly. For 
their part, the Virginians were by no means hostile. Early in 1786 
they responded with an act requesting the Kentuckians to hold still 
another meeting to decide whether they wanted Statehood upon 
certain generally fair conditions, including the assumption of part 
of Virginia’s debt. 

Then followed a series of confused events in Kentucky. A new 
Indian war broke out, changes were asked in the conditions laid down 
by Virginia, and other factors conspired to cause a wearisome delay. 
Virginia was unwilling to consent to the separation of Kentucky 
until Congress had agreed to admit her as a new State. But as the 
delay dragged on, a considerable party of Kentuckians, seeing how 
weak the Confederation was and angered by the evidence that it was 
ready to surrender the navigation of the lower Mississippi, began 
actively to oppose entrance into the Union. Led by General James 
Wilkinson, an unprincipled settler in the region, they demanded im¬ 
mediate severance from Virginia, an independent government, a 
treaty with Spain for the navigation of the Mississippi, and a reser¬ 
vation of the question of a connection with the United States to the 
future. While most of the settlers were too loyal to enter Wilkin¬ 
son’s plot, the majority regarded it with some indulgence as a means 
of bringing pressure to bear upon Congress. 17 A convention which 
met in September, 1787, petitioned Congress for admission to the 
United States, but the old national government refused to act, 
handing the question over to the new Federal Congress. It was 
hence not until 1792 that Kentucky finally became the fifteenth 
State, adopting her Constitution in April and entering the Union 
im June. 

The year 1787, in which the Federal Constitution was drafted, 
whs also the year in which the destinies of the West received their 
most definite shaping. Congress not only adopted its ordinance for 
the government and future of the Northwest Territory, but granted 
the Ohio Company, which had been founded by General Rufus Put¬ 
nam, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Winthrop Sargent, and other New 
Englanders, the right to purchase 1,500,000 acres for a million 

17 There was also a Spanish conspiracy in Tennessee; the subject is treated in the 
Tenn. Hist. Mag. for December, 1917. 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 


671 


dollars. 18 South of the Ohio, this year Kentucky was turning her 
back upon Wilkinson and the other unprincipled men who had been 
negotiating with Spanish agents, and was preparing to enter the 
Union. Still farther south, this was the year in which the last 
embers of the secessionist movement in the Tennessee country were 
quenched by North Carolina. South Carolina’s cession of her 
western claims was made in 1787, and it was only a question of time 
till North Carolina followed her example. When she finally did so, 
the creation of the Territory South of the Ohio followed in May, 
1790, upon the same basis as the Northwest Territory, save that 
there was to be no exclusion of slavery. The first governor sent to 
the Northwest Territory was General Arthur St. Clair, a man of 
high character but weak administrative capacity; the first governor 
of the Southwest was William Blount of North Carolina, a competent 
administrator but a man of defective character. 

/ All the old States with large unoccupied areas made haste, while 
"the Revolutionary War was still raging, to encourage their settle¬ 
ment. Georgia established a land office for that purpose in June 
and North Carolina in November, 1777; Virginia in May, 1779; and 
Pennsylvania in April, 1781. 19 The land of these commonwealths 
could almost be had for the asking. Georgia by her first law (1777) 
gave every head of a family 200 acres, with 50 more for every 
member of his family and for every slave up to ten in number. A 
settler with a household of five, and ten slaves was thus entitled to 
950 acres free. This legislation was followed in 1783 by a less 
generous enactment, but it endured only two years. Then the land- 
hungry emigrants, pouring westward into the rich new counties of 
Washington, Franklin, and Greene to raise corn, wheat, and tobacco, 
were delighted by a new law which again allowed every head of a 
family 200 acres and every other member 50, up to a grand total of 
1000, without charge. Those whose households were small might 
buy land at three shillings an acre, in the depreciated currency of the 
time, to make up the maximum acreage. This system of distribution 
gave every encouragement to the spread of the plantation, manned 
by blacks. The Piedmont or upland country, shut off from the 


is w P and T. P. Cutler, “Life of Manasseh Cutler,” I; J. A. Barrett, “Evolution 
of the Ordinance of 1787” in Univ. of Nebraska Papers, B. A. Hinsdale, The Old 

N °*gS^’. land laws are in Marbury and Crawford's Statutes, 3j6 ft ; Pennsyl- 

vlSniarin'Hentogfxf^S;’North cLolinJs in State Records.XXiv, 43-48, etc. 
(consult index). 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


672 

lowlands by the dreary pine barren country, had heretofore con¬ 
tained comparatively few slaves, either in Georgia or South Carolina; 
but the ease with which large holdings were obtained was soon to 
conspire with the growth of cotton culture to foster slavery. 

North Carolina was almost equally generous. Any man might 
have 640 acres if his survey was bounded in any part by vacant 
lands, and 1000 acres where it fell within lands already preempted 
—that is, where he did not get first choice from an attractive stretch. 
For this he was to pay only about sixpence an acre in depreciated 
currency, together with the fees; though if his allotment happened 
to exceed 640 acres for himself and 100 acres for every member of 
his family, the charge for the excess area was greater. Virginia’s 
act of 1779 gave every family on the western waters 400 acres free, 
while if more was wanted, it had a preemption right to 1000 acres 
adjoining, for which the charge was only two cents an acre. Anyone, 
moreover, could go to the land office, and buy unlimited tracts at 
eight shillings an acre in depreciated money. Great land companies 
were formed in Europe and America, and huge Virginia stretches 
were bought up by speculators to be held for a future profit. The 
poor homeseeker, thus shut out of some of the best farming country, 
had to purchase at an advance, become a renter, or remove farther 
west. In Pennsylvania the old proprietary holdings were being sold 
in 1784 at two shillings an acre, and the land beyond the Alleghenies 
at eight pence. 

Lands, moreover, were given away in enormous quantities as boun¬ 
ties for Revolutionary service. 20 North Carolina by an act of 1780 
offered each volunteer 200 acres, and the following year increased 
the amount to 640 acres. Georgia’s record shows how many dif¬ 
ferent forms these compensations in land might take. Her soldiers 
of the Continental Line received “continental certificates” good for 
farms; men who had enrolled for emergency service were given 
“minute men certificates”; men who, after being driven from their 
homes, served as soldiers, were allowed “refugee certificates”; those 
who had merely remained in the State, maintaining their American 
allegiance, when others had fled, were entitled to “citizens’ certifi¬ 
cates” for 250 acres apiece; and there were “marine certificates” 

20 Military grants by the State are comprehensively treated in M. N. Oldfield’s 
“Federal Land Grants to the States,” Univ. of Minnesota Studies, No. 2 , ch. 4. 
North Carolina’s bounty laws are in the State Records, XXIV, 339, 42. Virginia gave 
privates 300 acres and officers more, up to 15,000 acres for major generals; Hening, 
X, 331, 375. Pennsylvania gave privates 200 acres, and major-generals 2,000; Laws 
of Commonwealth of Pa., II, 89 ft., 272 ff. 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 


673 

for men in the State’s naval force. 21 We have seen how in Pennsyl¬ 
vania the greed of speculators who bought up the land certificates of 
needy soldiers affected the course of politics and the administration 
of the State finances. 

All the settlers were attracted by the same reward, fertile lands, 
easily cleared, costing little or nothing; but what we may call the 
forces of impulsion behind them were varied. Many were Europeans 
fleeing from economic or governmental injustice; many were veterans 
left uprooted by the war. Some were tenant farmers of the East, 
or overseers of Tidewater plantations, tired of being landless. A 
number of Virginia farmers moved west to escape the institution of 
slavery, and gave thanks when they reached the free soil of Ohio, 
while on the other hand, many Southerners and even some New 
Englanders emigrated to buy large areas and stock them with slaves. 
The canny Yankee would sell out at home, stop in Maryland to 
purchase negroes, and settle on a plantation in Kentucky or Ten¬ 
nessee. There rapidly grew up in Kentucky the same distinct 
cleavage between the slaveholders of the Bluegrass country and the 
hill farmers which existed in Virginia between the Tidewater 
planters and mountain settlers. But whatever the impelling motive, 
the stream that poured west down the Ohio, along the Wilderness 
Road through the Cumberland Gap, and down the Holston and 
Tennessee Rivers, swelled with only occasional checks from the 
Indian menace. 

The rapid development of a fringe of ne^y commonwealths had an 
unmistakable influence, upon national polity. The early efforts at 
western State-making all tended to strengthen the central govern¬ 
ment and the feeling of nationalism. The settlers of the would-be 
States of Westsylvania and Franklin, in appealing to Congress for 
recognition, urged it to assume full control over the western lands. 
One element in Kentucky turned its eyes for a time toward New 
Orleans, but only for a time, while the people of what is now West 
Virginia consistently desired a stronger national authority as their 
best protection. Drawn from every part of the Confederacy, the 
western settlers were naturally inclined to be more loyal to the 
nation than to the locality; while the fact that the older States could 
regard the West as a common possession increased their sense of 
unity. 

21 Stevens’s “Georgia,” Vol. II, Book V, ch. 2 . 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


674 

But the influence of western development upon the government 
and institutions of the States as such was equally pronounced. Two 
characteristics plainly stamped the nascent commonwealths beyond 
the Appalachians, democracy and radicalism. 22 Democracy sug¬ 
gested many—not all—articles of the Ordinance of 1787: the inter¬ 
diction of slavery; the provision for full religious freedom; the clear 
and workable provision for the descent of property, by which the 
widow of a man who died intestate was to have one-third his 
property and the children to share the rest equally; and the require¬ 
ment that education should forever be encouraged. As for the radi¬ 
calism, it was of the type which has usually marked our frontier 
communities. It was expressed in the compact between Judge 
Henderson and the settlers of Transylvania in 1774, under which the 
self-government of the people was limited only by the Proprietors’ 
veto-power. It appeared in the Constitution adopted by the “State 
of Franklin,” granting a unicameral legislature comprehensive powers. 
We meet it again in the association drawn up by the settlers of the 
Nashville region in 1780—the Cumberland compact—which was 
closely modeled upon the earlier compact of the Watauga settlers. 
It vested the administration in a committee or court of twelve 
Triers or Judges, to be elected in the different hamlets by the adult 
freemen, and to be subject to recall. Looking backward, this rough- 
and-ready government somewhat resembled the old English court- 
let; looking forward, it had its resemblance to the modern commis¬ 
sion government. 

Democracy and radicalism appeared saliently in the government 
of the frontier commonwealth of Vermont. One of the best features 
of the Constitution .which the Vermonters adopted in 1777 was its 
provision that any adult freeman might vote or hold office whether 
he had a pennyworth of property or not, and regardless of his reli¬ 
gious tenets. One section of the bill of rights has enabled Vermont 
to boast that she was the first State to prohibit slavery by consti¬ 
tutional provision. In its main outlines the government followed 
that of Pennsylvania, for Dr. Thomas Young, of Philadelphia, was 
one of the principal advisers of the little commonwealth. It com¬ 
prehended a unicameral legislature, an executive of fourteen heads 
—Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and twelve councilors—and a 
Council of Censors. Happily for Vermont, where the population 
was homogeneous and party animosities were mild, this faulty frame- 

22 Cf. F J Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Kept 
Amer. Hist. Assn., 1893, 199 ff. v 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 675 

work served well enough. The Council of Censors proved an 
effective body in 1786, when it met and proposed changes in the Con¬ 
stitution which a convention duly accepted, and which greatly im¬ 
proved the instrument. Its form was made clearer, the functions of 
the three departments were more precisely defined, and the Governor 
and Council were given not only a qualified veto, but the power to 
propose amendments to bills. 23 

But while the spirit of the frontier was thus radically democratic, 
the new West was not destined to produce governments lacking in 
balance or vigor. For this fact we must in large part thank the 
national Congress. It instituted territorial governments in both 
the Northwest and Southwest which were highly centralized and 
authoritative. Its reasons for doing this, when most of the thirteen 
original States had made their executives weak and their legislatures 
unwisely strong, were three in number. The country to be gov¬ 
erned, in the first place, was wild and subject to peril from the 
Indians or irresponsible adventurers; it was necessary to place 
ample authority in the hands of an agency always alert and ready 
to act. Again, the impotence and confusion of several State govern¬ 
ments on the coast had shown the error of the old policy. But the 
greatest reason was that the western country was a national domain, 
in which the supervision and policy of the Federal Government 
must always be supreme; and the one satisfactory way of exercising 
national control was through a Federally-appointed Governor of 
great powers. This Governor appointed all local officers, laid out 
townships and counties, enforced the laws, commanded the militia, 
and at the beginning was authorized, together with three Federally- 
appointed judges, to adopt any laws of the older States, subject to 
disapproval by Congress. The new States of the West thus learned 
in their infancy the value of an energetic and powerful executive 
department, while it may have had a certain value to the older 
States as an example. 24 

II. General Conclusion 


Historians have sometimes written as if, except for a single funda¬ 
mental consideration, it were a misfortune that the American nation 


23 The records of the Governor and Council of Vermont have been published by the 

State in eight volumes; L. H. Meader’s monograph on The Council of Censors 
covers Vermont’s as well as Pennsylvania’s experience. „ . 0 

24 Cf D G McCarty, “Territorial Governors of the Old Northwest, ch. 4. Some 
provisions ‘ of the Northwest Ordinance reflected the political views of fairly # con¬ 
servative easterners; e.g., the property qualifications and the restraints on inter¬ 
ference with contracts. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


676 

began its career rather as a congeries of thirteen states than as a 
single unitary state. The colonies plunged into the war in a waver¬ 
ing file, Georgia and New York standing irresolute long after Massa¬ 
chusetts was actually at arms. They would not agree upon a na¬ 
tional army of effective character when it might have shortened 
the war by years. Later they would not consent to a national 
treasury, a national tariff, or a national foreign policy. At 
times, some of them struck at their neighbors with unconcealed 
malevolence; again, some were so wretchedly misgoverned that 
they did themselves grave injury. To the mind which reflects upon 
the high abilities and achievements of the principal national leaders, 
from Washington down, and the contrasting weakness of the petty 
men who frequently swayed State affairs, the conclusion may seem 
plain. Had all the revolting colonists from north to south been 
governed from one center as effectively as all Virginians were 
governed from Richmond—had it been possible to do this, which 
assuredly it was not—the Americans might have had an army able 
to win without foreign help, a sound fiscal system, and a competent 
diplomacy. The one fundamental loss, these critics would say, would 
have been the sacrifice of the basis of our admirable federal system, 
with all that is implied in its nice division of local and national 
functions. But actually the States served an infinitely larger pur¬ 
pose in the years 1775-1789 than merely making possible our 
dual system of government. 

In the main, this‘purpose was one of conservation—the States 
were the agencies through which most of the political and institu¬ 
tional experience gained by the colonists since the planting of 
British America was preserved. In smaller degree, it was con¬ 
structive—the States applied new theories to their old practices, 
and the resulting experimentation was fruitful. 

Their very unevenness in entering the Revolution points to a 
characteristic service in conservation. The process of revolution in 
its external phase ended when British authority was destroyed; in 
its internal phase, the reshaping of government and society, no one 
could say just what was its terminus. By dividing the movement 
into thirteen parts, each with its own center and character, the 
States prevented it from going too far in its internal phase. It is. 
usual for revolutions to overshoot their mark—the Puritan Revolu¬ 
tion, French Revolution, and Russian Revolution all did so. The 


FACING WESTWARD: CONCLUSION 677 

moderate element in a revolution never shows sufficient energy to 
please the radical element; and because it is moderate, it does not 
have enough decision to hold the radicals back. In Pennsylvania 
the internal revolution was pushed too far. The moderates were 
thrown rudely to one side and the radicals set up a government that 
sometimes acted like a tyranny. But in the country as a whole that 
did not happen; the clash of conservative Whigs and extremist Whigs 
occurred on thirteen different stages, with no synchronization, and a 
consequent abatement of its heat, while the extremists were in 
general deprived of the support to be had in linking their dubious 
schemes of internal change with their sound determination to over¬ 
throw British rule. 

The States preserved, as a heritage from the colonial period, some 
evils which were only slowly thrown off, such as the restrictions 
upon suffrage and the connection between church and government. 
A radical revolution of purely nationalist character might have 
destroyed them at once. But the States also preserved from the 
colonial governments a multitude of heritages whose loss would have 
been an irreparable calamity. The forms and principles of seven¬ 
teenth century English democracy were there, and all the lessons 
learned in one hundred and fifty years of partial self-government on 
American soil, from 1609 to 1776. The revolting colonists took good 
care to throw away little that was worth saving. The new govern¬ 
ments were an organic and uninterrupted growth from the old. 
When the Federal Constitution came to be written, it was based 
not merely on the debate and thought of a single summer, as Glad¬ 
stone in his famous dictum suggested, nor merely on the thought and 
experience of the Revolutionary era, but on the accumulated results 
of five generations of political effort in the New World. The States 
had preserved those results in the only form possible. 

The training in self-government which Americans had been striv¬ 
ing to enlarge under the crown was suddenly made complete and 
intensive; and the fact that there were thirteen States to utilize 
this experience gave assurance that it would be multiform. Colonial 
practices had varied within rather narrow limits; State practices 
could differ within very wide limits. Governmental ideas of con¬ 
trasting nature were now searchingly tested. The American people 
could observe the comparative happiness of New York under a 
well-balanced constitution and of North Carolina under one which 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


678 

lacked balance. They could watch the operation in Massachusetts 
of a government in which the two houses had equal powers, of one 
in Virginia in which the upper house had limited powers, and one in 
Pennsylvania in which there was but one house. They could see 
in Georgia the result of a total divorce between church and state, 
and in Connecticut the effect of a close connection. Experiments 
could be attempted, some fruitful, like Maryland’s with the electoral 
college, some barren, like Pennsylvania’s with the Censors. Some¬ 
times a majority of the States proved that a given institution was 
valueless—no sensible man wanted an executive council in the 
Federal Government. 

On the whole, the success of the American people with their State 
governments was sufficient to justify an increasing measure of self- 
confidence. They quickly shook off that fear of a despotism, that 
apprehension that a Caesar or Cromwell might spring up, which is so 
hard for us to understand, but which to many was so real and 
terrible. The State governments would have been better had the 
Revolutic.1 been less a civil war. In the rigor of the struggle hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of loyalists were disfranchised or exiled, and they 
included many of the best educated and most judicious citizens. Yet 
in not more than three States does the balance lie on the debit side 
of the ledger. The dangers to property and order in 1785-86 aroused 
a wave of alarm which swept the movement for a strong national 
government to success. Yet State rights men like Clinton and Han¬ 
cock might justly argue in 1788 that the danger had been only 
temporary, was exaggerated, and had already been surmounted. The 
States, as distinguished from the nation, were safe. 

Even as the national government was being bom, Madison wrote 
that past history and all evidences of public sentiment made it 
unquestionable “that the first and most natural attachment of the 
people” would always “be to the governments of their respective 
States.” 25 

2® Federalist, No. 46. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


(The following bibliography is divided into two parts, the first treating documentary 
materials and general histories, and the second giving the special sources for each 
chapter.) 


The documentary sources now in print are extensive but uneven. A few States, 
such as North Carolina and Pennsylvania, have published small libraries of material, 
while others have left even their legislative journals untouched. Students should con¬ 
sult Hasse’s “Public Archives of the Thirteen Original States to 1789” in the Report 
of the American Historical Association for 1906, vol. II. The fullest guide to manu 
script materials, which need not be summarized here, is the findings of the Historical 
Manuscripts Committee of the American Historical Association in the Reports, indexed 
under the various States in the general index. 

Only a few national collections of documents need be mentioned in a bibliography 
concerned with State sources. Peter Force’s “American Archives” (9 v. 1837-53) « 
an indispensable array of papers for the years 1774-76- There are various editions of 
the Journals of the Continental Congress, the best being issued by the Library of 
Congress under the editorship of W. C. Ford and later Gaillard Hunt, still “W 1 * 8 : 
The “Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1783-89 (7 v., 183 3 * 34 ). f> 

Francis Wharton’s “Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Mates 
(6 v.: 1899), are valuable. Jonathan Elliot’s “Debates in the Severa State Conven-, 
tions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution” (5 v.; 1836-45), also contains the 
Journals of the Federal Constitutional Convention and Madisons Notes. L. L. 
Burnett’s “Letters of Members of the Continental Congress to be c0 ™P*<;te 
volumes, of which the first two appeared in 1921-23, throws light on State histc» y. 

The New England States as a group have shown more enterprise m publishing 
documentary materials than any other section. The New Hampshire Prov ‘™l ia h 
State Papers vols. 7, 8, 9, 10, 21, and 22, present legislative records and other 

sou ces for the years .764 . 79 * 0873-771 . 89 a ; 93 >. OtherGu de” 
tions are listed in J. A. Lamed, “Literature of American History, A. L. A. Guide 
( 1002 1 no 8 9 Of value for Massachusetts history are the Journals of Each 
Provincial Congress” (1838), which contains also the journals of the committees of 
fateli" and AWen^radforVs “Speeches of the Governors,” with the leg..lu«.ve rep,es , 
J76< 7«; (1818). The Massachusetts Historical Society is publishing the Journals ot 

the^House S ' 

SSS r“n\. l0n E g spS..y T , h 0 be ^entioned are the Jererny Btdhnap Papers 

i*?'. ^JonXn Tru^ul'lPape. 9 ’li v.i . 8 « 5 - 9 »). »d a firs. 

lative records of 1775 * 6 , including tne jour a the “Records of the State 

tinuation of these materials is foun “Records of the Colony and State of 

of Connecticut, 1776-81 (1894-19 )• though imperfect, furnish a wealth of 

Rhode Island,” vols. 7-.0 mcluM (.86‘-6s£ tho,are the “Records 

TS Cou R „dl of I t n fe.y 7 an°d 9 Governor and Council” (8 .873-80), and the “Ver- 

^rS^^ktes ZZS&'tSg. 

for this period in a f e l n vol^3 and 4 of the Fourth Series (1900). 

55). The papers of the Gov r ]on j a i Records (1852-53) are the minutes of the 
In vols. 10-16 inclusive of * h f Safety 1775-7, and the Supreme Executive 

Provincial Council 177i;75, th e C g of the House 0 f Representatives’’ vols. 

Council 1777 - 90 . The Votes and g libraries. New York has published the 

“Messages' of^the’Governors’^in 0 ten U edited by Charles Z. Lincoln, of which 

679 



68o 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


the first covers the colonial period and the second the years 1777-1822 (1909). The 
State has also issued the “Public Papers of George Clinton to the Evacuation of New 
York” (11 v.; 1856-61). The “Documentary History of the State of New York” 
(4 v.; 1849-51), edited with full indexes by E. B. O’Callaghan, and the “Documents 
Relative to the Colonial History of New York” (11 v.; 1856-61), are both valuable; 
a supplementary series of four volumes edited by B. Fernow (1877-87) has been 
added to the latter, of which the final volume contains the proceedings on military 
affairs of the Provincial Congresses, Convention, and Committee of Safety. There is 
also the “Journals of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Convention, Committee of 
Safety and Council of Safety, 1775-78” (2 v.; 1842) which includes the correspondence 
of these bodies. References to various calendars of New York manuscripts may be 
found in the A. L. A. Guide, 10, 11. 

In the New Jersey Archives, vols. 24-30, first series (1902-), and 1-5, second 

series (1901-17) are valuable newspaper extracts for the years 1762-82. Henry 
Stevens’s “Analytical Index to the Colonial Documents of New Jersey in the State 
Paper Offices of England” (1858) is the fifth volume of the Collections of the New 
Jersey Historical Society, and summarizes many documents of importance in Gov. 
William Franklin’s administration. We have also a “Catalogue of Papers Relating to 
Pennsylvania and Delaware in the State Paper Office” (1850). The minutes of the 
Delaware Council, 1776-92, are in the sixth volume of the Delaware Historical Society 
Papers (1887). 

The publishing record of the Southern States is the most uneven of all. We find 
in volumes 11, 12, 16, and 21 of the “Archives of Maryland” (1892-1901) the Journal 
of the Maryland Convention, 1775, and the Journal and Correspondence of the Council 
of Safety, 1775-77, and the State Council, 1777-79. The “Correspondence of Horatio 
Sharpe,” royal governor till 1769, is in volumes 6, 9, and 14 of the “Archives” 
(1888-95). As for Virginia, we have the “Collections of the Virginia Historical 
Society,” edited by R. A. Brock (new series; 11 v.; 1882-92); the “Calendar of 
Virginia State Papers” (11 v.; 1875-93); the “Proceedings of the Conventions of 1775- 
76” (1816); and the “Journals of the House of Delegates” (1776-90; 4 v.; 1827-28), 
which supplements the “Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1619-1776,” edited by 
J. P. Kennedy and H. R. Mcllwaine (1905-15). The “Legislative Journals of the 
Council of Colonial Virginia” (3 v.: 1918-19) were also edited by H. R. Mcllwaine. 

The most enterprising Southern State in the publication of documentary materials 
has been North Carolina. Of the ten volumes of her “Colonial Records,” edited by 
W. L. Saunders, volumes 9 and 10 (1890) cover the years 1771-76; of the “State 
Records,” edited by Walter Clark, volumes 11 to 28 inclusive (1895-1907) cover the 
years 1776-1790. They are indispensable to a study of the period. The second and 
third volumes of the Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society (18^8-59) 
contain the journal of the Council of Safety for 1775-76. Some papers of the Council 
of Safety, General Committee, and Provincial Congress are in the South Carolina 
Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vols. 1-4, 8, 9 (1900-08). In the “Colonial 
Records of Georgia,” volume 12 (1907) offers the minutes of the Governor and 
Council, 1771-82; volume 15 (1907) the journal of the Commons House, 1769-82; and 
volume 17 (1908) the journal of the upper house, 1763-74. In the “Revolutionary 
Records” (1908) of the same State, volume 2 furnishes the minutes of the Executive 
Council and journal of the land court, 1778-85, while volume 3 has the journal of the 
Assembly, 1781-84. The journal of the Council of Safety and Provincial Congress are 
in the first volume of the “Revolutionary Records.” 

Collections of State laws for this period are easily accessible. Students should 
consult W. H. Crawford and Horatio Marbury, “Digest of the Laws of the State of 
Georgia, 1755-1800” (1802); South Carolina’s “Statutes at Large 1682-1838” (10 v.; 
1836-73), edited by Thomas Cooper and David J. McCord; the statutes of North 
Carolina in the “State Records,” vol. 23; W. W. Hening’s “Virginia Statutes at 
Large, 1619-1808” (13 v.; 1819-23); Maxcy’s edition of the “Laws of Maryland” 
(3 v.; 1811); A. J. Dallas’s “Laws of Pennsylvania 1700-1801” (1797-1801) and J. T. 
Mitchell and Henry Flanders’s “Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania 1682-1801” (n v.; 
1896-1906); “General Statutes of New Jersey” (3 v.; 1896); the “Laws of the State 
of New York, 1777-1801” (5 v.; 1886-87); the “Acts and Laws of Massachusetts, 
I 775- I 7&9>” in three volumes, printed year by year, but each volume paged continu¬ 
ously; the “Index to the Laws of New Hampshire, 1679-1883” (1886), and A. P. 
Cross, “Index to the General and Special Legislation of the State of Vermont” (1894). 

The State and local historical societies number scores. A guide to the contents of 
their thousands of volumes is offered in A. P. C. Griffin’s “Bibliography of American 
Historical Societies” (1907, second ed.). The publications of the Massachusetts His¬ 
torical Society, American Antiquarian Society, New York Historical Society, Penn- 
sylvania Historical Society, and Virginia Historical Society are the most notable. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


681 


General Histories 

Several State histories are of peculiar value because written by men who lived 
during or soon after this period. Jeremy Belknap’s “History of New Hampshire” 
(3 v.; 1784-92) is still one of the best of all State histories. Thomas Hutchinson’s 
“History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1749-74” (1828) is an able book, 
based in part on documents since lost. George R. Minot’s “History of the Insurrec¬ 
tion in Massachusetts in 1786” (1788) is an analysis of the causes and events of 
Shays’s rebellion, by a capable Massachusetts jurist. Benjamin Trumbull’s “Complete 
History of Connecticut ... to 1764” (2 v.; 1818) has merit, but does not compare 
with Belknap. 

On New York history we have two good works by loyalists. William Smith’s “His¬ 
tory of the Late Province of New York” (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., first series, vols. 4 
and 5; 1829-30), written by a Tory lawyer whose manuscript diary in the New York 
Public Library is also^a~V<ilt 3 ad)Ie source, comes down to 1762. It is supplemented by 
Thomas Jones’s “History of New York During the Revolutionary War” (2 v.; 1879). 
David Ramsay’s “History of South Carolina” (2 v.; 1809) is topical, not chronological, 
and comes down to Jefferson’s administration. His “History of the Revolution of 
South Carolina” (2 v.; 1785) is dull but valuable because based on personal impres¬ 
sions and conversations with participants in the war. John D. Burk’s ‘.“History of 
Virginia” (3 v.; 1804-05), written with advice from Jefferson, comes down only to 
1776, but was continued by Skelton Jones and L. H. Girardin in an additional volume 
(1816); the continuation covers the years 1776-81, embodies many documents, and is 
detailed on the events leading up to the Revolution. Hugh Williamson’s “History of 
North Carolina” (2 v.; 1812) stops with 1771 and is almost worthless. J. S. Jones’s 
“A Defence of the Revolutionary History of North Carolina” (1834) closes with the 
Declaration of Independence, but is indispensable for its brief period. 

Later State histories are for the most part poor or indifferent, with a few scientific 
and vigorous works. The best continuous history of Massachusetts is John S. Barry’s 
“History of Massachusetts” (3 v.; 1855-57), based on the authorities available when 
written and showing good judgment, but out of date. Alden Bradford’s “History of 
Massachusetts” (3 v.; 1822-29) is restricted to the years 1764-1820, and is less valu¬ 
able. The standard history of Rhode Island until recently was S. G. Arnold’s 
“History of Rhode Island, 1636-1790” (2 v.; 1859-60). I. B. Richman’s “Rhode 
Island, A Study in Separatism” (1905) is an excellent short study, and Edward Field’s 
“Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century” (3 v.; 1902) 
contains a wealth of material, sometimes ill digested. A good short history of New 
Hampshire is F. B. Sanborn’s “New Hampshire: An Epitome of Popular Government” 
(1904), while a fuller account is offered in Everett S. Stackpole’s “History of New 
Hampshire” (4 v.; 1917). Alexander Johnston’s “Connecticut: A Study of a Com¬ 
monwealth-Democracy” (1887) is a brief outline based on thorough study, but develop¬ 
ing a mistaken thesis. George L. Clark’s “A History of Connecticut” (1914) is a 
good popular work, “Connecticut as a Colony and as a State,” edited by Forrest 
Morgan (4 v.; 1904) contains much material, badly proportioned and sometimes uncriti¬ 
cal. By far the best book for the period is Richard J. Purcell’s “Connecticut in Transi¬ 
tion, (1918), the emphasis of which is on the years after 1800. Local histories for 
the New England States are numerous and often valuable. A good example is the 
“History of Concord, New Hampshire,” edited by James O. Lyford (2 v.; 1903)- 

An admirable State history is D. S. Alexander’s “Political History of the State of 
New York” (3 v.; 1905-09), which begins with the year 1774; it is supplemented by 
his “Four Great New Yorkers” (1923), dealing with the times of Roosevelt, Cleve¬ 
land Platt, and Hill. The work shows clear insight and is written with vigor and 
sparkle. Jabez D. Hammond’s “History of Political Parties in the State of New York” 
(4th ed., 2 v.; 1846) takes 1789 as its starting point. E. H. Robertses “New York 
(2 v.; 1887) is a rather superficial work. Isaac S. Mulford s Civil and Political 
History of New Jersey” (1848) comes down only to 1789, and covers the last years 
but sketchily A large and ill-planned compilation is offered in New Jersey as a 
Colony and as a State” (4 v.; 1902), by F. B. Lee and others. The fullest history of 
Pennsylvania is by H. M. Jenkins and others, “Pennsylvania, Colonial and Federal 
(3 v • 1903). For this period it is less useful than A. S'. Bolles’s “Pennsylvania, 
Province and State” (2 v.; 1899)- A brief history, brightly written and full of ideas, 
but capricious in emphasis, is S. G. Fisher’s “Pennsylvania Cokmy and Common¬ 
wealth” (1897) It gives little attention to events after 1783. The student cannot 
neglect W H Egle’s “Illustrated History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” 
(1876), an'assemblage of county histories by various writers generally reliable For 
Delaware there are but two general histories, the three volumes by H. C. Conrad 


682 THE AMERICAN STATES 

(1908) and the compendious, ill-arranged, and badly written two volumes by Thomas 
Scharf (1888). 

Scharf also wrote an outstanding “History of Maryland” (3 v.; 1879), which is ill- 
digested and inaccurate, but offers much material not available elsewhere, including 
important documents. James McSherry’s “History of Maryland” (1849) is not of 
value. 'W. H. Browne’s “Maryland, the History of a Palatinate” (1884), one of the 
best books in the American Commonwealth Series, extends only to the Revolution. 
The volume on Virg inia in that series, by John Esten Cooke (1883), delightfully 
written but unscholarly, also gives almost all its space to the years before 1783. 
R. R. Howison’s “History of Virginia” (2 v.; 1846-48) is popular and uncritical. 
The two volumes of “Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical,” by W. H. 
Foote (1850-55) are really a history of Presbyterianism there. Another work of 
scattered materials is Henry Howe’s “Historical Collections of Virginia” (1845). 
By all odds the most valuable study of Virginia history during this period is H. J. 
Eckenrode’s “.The Revolution in Virginia” (1916). Our fullest history of North 
Carolina is a set of six uniform volumes (1919), of which R. D. W. Connor has writ¬ 
ten the first, “The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods, 1584-1783,” and W. K. Boyd 
the second, “The Federal Period, 1783-1860” (1919). They are interesting, accurate, 
and as thorough as the space allows. Among the older books which they largely 
displace are John W. Moore’s “History of North Carolina” (2 v.; 1880), and S. A. 
Ashe’s “History of North Carolina” (1908), which comes down to 1783. W. D. Cooke’s 
“Revolutionary History of North Carolina” (1853) is sketchy. 

The recent five volume history of South Carolina edited by H. G. Cutler (1920) is 
disappointing; Volume One ends with the year 1830. But in Edward McCrady’s four 
volumes, the two last of which (“South Carolina in the Revolution, 1776-83”; 1901-02) 
are invaluable, we have one of the best of all State histories. The older works are 
not worth mentioning, save Ramsay’s and R. W. Gibbes’s “Documentary History of 
the American Revolution” (3 v.; 1853), relating especially to South Carolina. As for 
Georgia, the best known books are W. B. Stevens’s “History of Georgia to 1798” 
(1847-59), and C. C. Jones’s “History of Georgia” (1883), both in two volumes, and 
in the older style of historical authorship. The latter is the better, but it closes with 
the Revolution, to which most of the second volume is devoted. 

/Chapter 1: The Colonies Before Their Union 

General authorities are cited in the “Guide to the Study and Reading of American 
Hostory,” by E. Channing, A. B. Hart, and F. J. Turner (1912), and in Evarts B. 
Greene’s “Foundations of American Nationality” (1922). Works of special value are 
Carl L. Becker’s “The Eve of the Revolution” (1918), G. E. Howard’s “Preliminaries 
of the Revolution” (1905), C. H. Van Tyne’s “Causes of the War of Independence” 
(1922), and J. T. Adams’s “Revolutionary New England, 1691-1776” (1923). 

A number of monographs treat separate Colonies and their problems with more 
scientific thoroughness than the general histories. They include W. H. Fry’s “New 
Hampshire as a Royal Province” (1908); Carl L. Becker’s “Political Parties in the 
Province of New York from 1760 to 1775” (1908); W. R. Shepherd, “History of Pro¬ 
prietary Government in Pennsylvania” (Columbia University Studies, 1896); Isaac 
Sharpless, “History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania” (2 v.; 1898-99), and 
“Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsylvania” (1919); E. J. Fisher, “New Jersey as a 
Royal Province, 1738-1776” (Columbia University Studies, 1911); N. D. Mereness, 
(“Maryland as a Proprietary Colony” (1901); P. S. Flippin, “Royal Government in 
Virginia” (1919); Charles L. Raper, “North Carolina, A Study in English Colonial 
Government” (1904); W. R. Smith, “South Carolina as a Royal Province, 1719- 
1776” (1903); and J. R. McCain’s “Georgia as a Proprietary Province” (1917), which 
comes down only to 1752. 

Among monographs on special phases of colonial history may be named Louise P. 
Kellogg’s “The American Colonial Charter,” in the Report of the American Historical 
Association, 1903; E. B. Greene’s “The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies” 
(1898); and A. E. McKinley’s “Suffrage Franchise in the English Colonies” (1905). 

Chapters II and III: The Revolutionary Transition 

Revolutionary history has been subjected to a thorough restudy in recent years. 
British commercial measures have been regarded in a new light since the publication 
of George L. Beer’s “Commercial Policy of England Towards the American Colonies” 
(1893), “British Colonial Policy 1754-65” (1907), “Origins of the British Colonial 
System 1578-1660” (1908), and “Old Colonial System, 1660-1754” (2 v.; 1912). 

Equally valuable is Arthur M. Schlesinger’s “Colonial Merchants and the American 
Revolution” (1918). Charles M. Andrews’s “Boston Merchants and the Non-Importa- 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


683 


tion Movement” (1917) is narrower in scope. The best account of British western 
policy as a cause of the Revolution is C. W. Alvord’s “Mississippi Valley in British 
Politics” (2 v.; 1917). For religious influences upon the Revolution see A. L. Cross’s 
“Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies” (1902), W. P. Breed’s “Presby¬ 
terians and the Revolution” (1876), and M. L. J. Griffin’s “Catholics and the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution” (2 v.; 1907-09). An original interpretation of constitutional issues 
is offered by Charles H. Mcllwain’s “The American Revolution” (1923). 

The best general histories of the inception of the Revolution are the third volume 
of Edward Channing’s “History of the United States” (1912); the first volume of 
George O. Trevelyan’s “The American Revolution” (4 v. to 1778; 1899-1907), a work 
continued by “George III and Charles Fox” (2 v.; 1912-14); M. A. M. Marks’s 
“England and America, 1763-1783” (2 v.; 1907); George Elliot Howard’s “Prelimi 
naries of the Revolution” (1905); C. H. Van Tyne’s “Causes of the War of Inde 
pendence” (1922); H. E. Egerton’s “Causes and Character of the American Revolu 
tion” (1923); and R. G. Adams’s “Political Ideas of the Amercian Revolution” (1922) 
The sixth volume of Justin Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America’ 
contains valuable references. Contemporary accounts not to be neglected are David 
Ramsay’s “American Revolution” (1789) and William Gordon’s “Rise, Progress, and 
Establishment of the Independence of the United States” (4 v.; 1788). David Ram¬ 
say’s “History of the Revolution of South Carolina” (1785) and John Drayton’s 
“Memoirs of the American Revolution” (1821) bear particularly upon the South. 

The list of special monographs in State history for these years is long and varied. 
For North Carolina we have E. W. Sikes, “Transition of North Carolina from Colony 
to Commonwealth” (1898); J. S. Bassett, “Constitutional Beginnings of North Caro¬ 
lina” (1894) and “Regulators of North Carolina” (Am. Hist. Assn. Rept., 1894); 
and W. H. Hoyt’s “Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence” (1907). An excellent 
study of “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina” was published by W. A. 
Schaper in 1901, while W. Roy Smith’s “South Carolina as a Royal Province” (1903) 
covers the destruction of the royal government. H. J. Eckenrode’s “The Revolution 
in Virginia” (1916) and C. H. Ambler’s “Sectionalism in Virginia” (1910) are indis¬ 
pensable. Monographs relating to Maryland include J. A. Silver’s “Provisional Gov¬ 
ernment of Maryland, 1774-77” (1895), and B. C. Steiner’s “Life and Administration 
of Sir Robert Eden” (1898), both in the Johns Hopkins University Studies. C. H. 
Lincoln’s “Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania” (1901) is illuminating. The 
same may be said of A. C. Flick’s “Loyalism in New York” (1901) revealing the im¬ 
portance of Toryism. Among the New England monographs should be mentioned H. 
A. Cushing’s “Transition from Provincial to Commonwealth Government in Massa¬ 
chusetts (1896), a detailed political history of Massachusetts from 1774 to 1780, and 
Edith A. Bailey’s “Influences Toward Radicalism in Connecticut, 1754 * 75 ” (1920). 

The three outstanding city histories are James Grant Wilson’s Memorial ^ History 
of New York” (4 v.; 1891-93), Justin Winsor’s “Memorial History of Boston” (4 v.; 
1880-81), and J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott’s “Philadelphia” (3 v.: 1884). Several 
shorter histories, like Mrs. Ravenel’s “Charleston (1906), are useful. 

To list half of the important biographies throwing light on the subject-matter of 
these chapters would here be impossible. No student can neglect the standard studies 
of the greater statesmen. Among valuable recent lives stand L. S. Mayo s John 
Wentworth” (1921), and D. D. Wallace’s “Henry Laurens (1915). Biographies of 
minor figures, like J. J. Boudinot’s “Life of E. Boudinot (1896) and I. Q- Leake s 
“Life and Times of Gen. John Lamb” (1857) are frequently of prime importance. 
The lives of certain loyalists have a special value: G E. Ellis s Count Rumford 
(1868), James K. Hosmer’s “Thomas Hutchinson (1896), and E. H. Baldwin s 
“Joseph Galloway” in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Bio^raMy go . 
Special attention should be given L. H. Gipson’s “Jared Ingersoll: A Study of 
American Loyalism” (1920). 

Chapters IV and V: Constitutional History. p < Pnnre’<? “Charters 

Texts of the State Constitution may be found in Ben: 
and Constitutions” (2 v.; 1877), or, more correctly, in Francis ^J^encet to the 

Charters, Constitutions, and Organic Laws (7 v., 1 J° r : hr l rv Runetin of 
printed journals of the constitutional conventions, see the State Library Bulletin o 
the University of the State of New York. Additions No. 2 November, 1894, ( 266 ff. 

The standard treatise on constitutional procedure was long John A. Jameson s f he 
Constitutional Convention” (revised ed. 1887), in part now supplanted by Roger 
Sherman Hoar’s “Constitutional Conventions” (1917)- A sketchy summary of State 
Gherman xioa s , • t rj Dealev’s “Growth of American State Con- 

constitutional is ory^P^r^ but valuable essays upon early State Constitutions are 
contained in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 



THE AMERICAN STATES 


684 

W. C. Morey’s “First State Constitutions and Sources of American Federalism” 
(1893), and W. C. Webster’s “State Constitutions of the American Revolution” (1897). 
Charles E. Merriam’s “History of American Political Theories” (1903) should be con¬ 
sulted, and A. N. Holcombe’s “State Government in the United States” (1916), while 
A. C. McLaughlin’s “The Courts, the Constitutions, and the Parties” (1912) is valuable. 
Francis N. Thorpe’s “Constitutional History of the American People” (2 v.; 1898) 
pays special attention to the States. Charles Borgeaud’s “Adoption and Amendment 
of Constitutions” (1895) covers European as well as American practise. 

For separate treatment of the ballot in the Constitutions, see “Suffrage in the United 
States,” by Kirk Porter (1918), a dry but accurate monograph, and James Schouler’s 
essay on “The Evolution of the American Voter” in the American Historical Review, 
II, 655 ff. T. R. Powell writes exhaustively on “The Separation of Powers” in the 
Political Science Quarterly, June, 1912, and March, 1913. Charles G. Haines has 
treated “The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy” (19x4), and Horace A. Davis 
“The Judicial Veto” (1914). 

The most thorough constitutional history of a single State is Charles Z. Lincoln’s 
“Constitutional History of New York” (5 v.; 1905), while there is also an admirable 
short “Constitutional History of the State of New York” by J. Hampden Dougherty 
(1915). For the constitutional history of North Carolina see J. S. Bassett, “Consti¬ 
tutional Beginnings of North Carolina” (Johns Hopkins Studies, Series 12); E. W. 
Sikes, “Our First Constitution,” in the North Carolina Booklet, vol. 7; Frank Nash, 
“The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 and Its Makers,” in James Sprunt His¬ 
torical Publications, vol. 12; and W. K. Boyd, “Antecedents of the North Carolina 
Convention of 1835,” in the South Atlantic Quarterly, 1910. Hugh Blair Grigsby 
has written an account of “The Virginia Convention of 1776” (1855), especially 
valuable for its portraits of delegates. For the first Maryland Constitution, see B. C. 
Steiner’s “Western Maryland in the Revolution,” Johns Hopkins University Studies, 
Series 20, B. W. Bond’s “State Government in Maryland, 1777-81,” Series 23, and 
J. A. Silver’s “Provincial Government of Maryland,” Series 13. The best account of 
the Delaware Constitution is in the Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware, II, 
No. 17. For that of Pennsylvania see S. B. Harding’s “Party Struggles over the 
First Pennsylvania Constitution,” in the Annual Report of the American Historical 
Association, 1894. Valuable for both Pennsylvania and Vermont is L. H. Meader’s 
study of “The Council of Censors” in the Papers of the Historical Seminary of Brown 
University, No. 10. On the Connecticut Charter-Constitution see Chapter V of 

R. J. Purcell’s “Connecticut in Transition” (1918); and for the constitutional history 
of Massachusetts to 1780 see S. E. Morison’s “Vote of Massachusetts on Summoning 
a Constitutional Convention” in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, April, 1917. 

A separate treatment of the Bills of Rights is found in George Jellinek’s “The 
Declaration of the Rights of Man” (1901) and Max Farrand’s “The Delaware Bill of 
Rights,” American Historical Review, III, 641. The influence of American Consti¬ 
tutions upon Europe is discussed in H. E. Bourne’s “American Precedents in the 
French National Assembly,” American Historical Reziew, VIII, 470. For an illumi¬ 
nating account of the political philosophy of the Revolution, see the second and last 
chapters of Carl Becker’s “The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History 
of Political Ideas” (1922). 

The best work upon constitutional revision is Walter F. Dodd’s “Revision and 
Amendment of State Constitutions” (1910). The proceedings of the important State 
revising conventions are in print. The “Journal of the Convention of 1779-80” in 
Massachusetts was published in 1832. To some extent it is supplemented by the 
“Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1820” (1821), which contains much 
matter on the workings of the original Constitution. The ’’Journal of the Convention 
to Revise the Constitution of New Hampshire, 1791-92,” was published in 1876. For 
Pennsylvania, the “Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 
1790” were published in 1825, containing the journals both of the Council of Censors 
in 1784 and the Convention of 1790. Material upon the movement for revision in 
Virginia is afforded by the “Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia Constitutional 
Convention of 1829-30” (1830). 

A careful study of constitutional revision in Massachusetts will be found in the 
“Manual” prepared for the Massachusetts Convention of 1917-18 (1917), the essay by 

S. E. Morison cited, and Charles Francis Adams’s “Life of John Adams” (1856). 
The Essex Result and its history are given in Theophilus Parsons’s “Memoir” (1859) 
of his father, Theophilus Parsons, Sr. The Proceedings of the Massachusetts His¬ 
torical Society, II, 64 ff., contain material on the executive veto in Massachusetts. 
Lois K. Mathews in The Expansion of New England” (1909) summarizes the 
grievances of the District of Maine and Hampshire County against the Constitution of 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


68 s 

1780. A thorough history of revision in New Hampshire is offered by J. F. Colby’s 
“Manual of the Constitution of New Hampshire” (1912), and E. C. Bean’s “Manual” 
for the New Hampshire Constitution of 1918 (1918). Timothy Dwight’s Travels, 
vol. 1 (1821), explain the workings of the Connecticut Constitution. Some pages upon 
the two revisions in South Carolina will be found in Ramsay’s “Revolution of South 
Carolina,” I, as well as his “History of South Carolina,” II. The fullest source for 
revision in Georgia is the first volume of the “Georgia Revolutionary Records.” 

Chapter VI: Political Development in New England 

Newspapers of the period are an indispensable source upon politics, not only for 
specific information but the insight they give into the spirit of parties. At the end 
of the Revolution the Connecticut Courant and Boston Gazette were two of the best 
journals published in America, and in 1784 the federalist Massachusetts Centinel took 
its place beside them. Other newspapers worth consulting are the New Hampshire 
Gazette, Vermont Gazette, Vermont Journal, Newport Mercury, United States Chroni¬ 
cle (Providence), and the Independent Chronicle (Boston). The Connecticut Gazette, 
published 1755-1786, was followed by the Connecticut Journal. A guide to library files 
is offered by the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1914-. 

Legislative journals of the Massachusetts House were printed year by year con¬ 
temporaneously. Those of the Connecticut General Court are in the “Records” of the 
Colony and State, and those of New Hampshire in the “Provincial and State Papers.” 
The “Vermont State Papers” (1823) contain some early journals of the Assembly, and 
from 1784 they were printed contemporaneously. 

Of the monographic studies a number are indispensable. For Massachusetts, A. E. 
Morse’s “Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800” (1909) stands pre¬ 
eminent. The same may be said of Purcell’s “Connecticut in Transition” for Con¬ 
necticut, a State upon which we also have M. Louise Greene’s “Development of Reli¬ 
gious Liberty in Connecticut” (1905). For Rhode Island the outstanding study is 
F. G. Bates’s “Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union” (1898). Among more 
general monographs are W. A. Robinson’s “Jeffersonian Democracy in New England 
(1916), which nominally begins with 1789; S. D. Luetscher, “Early Political Ma¬ 
chinery in the United States” (1903); O. G. Libby’s “Geographical Distribution of the 
Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution” (1894); P. E. Lauer s 
“Church and State in New England” (Johns Hopkins Studies, 1892); and Henry 
Jones Ford’s “Rise and Growth of American Politics” (1914) are illuminating. The 
volumes by Morse and Purcell contain lists of pamphlets and election sermons. 

The numerous biographies throw less light on politics than might be expected. We 
may mention the lives of John Adams, and W. V. Wells s Life and Public Services 
of Samuel Adams” (3 v.; 1865), supplemented by R. V. Harlow’s “Life of Samuel 
Adams” (1923). There is no life of Bowdoin, and no worthy life of Hancock. The 
Samuel Adams manuscripts in the New York Public Library are a much-used source. 
There is a little material of worth in Noah Brooks’s “Henry Knox (1900) like the 
long letter on Shays’s Rebellion in ch. 9, and in H. C. Lodge’s “Life and Letters of 
George Cabot” (1877). Seth Ames’s “Works of Fisher Ames” (2 v.; 1854) present 
the writings of a zealous Massachusetts Federalist. On the other side, T. C. Amory s 
“Life of James Sullivan” (2 v.; 1859) is a ponderous biography of a prominent Anti- 
Federalist leader. The chief value in J. T. Austen’s “Elbndge Gerry’ (2 v.; 1828-29), 
the life of another Anti-Federalist, is in the letters. For the social background see 
E. S. Thomas’s “Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-five Years” (2 v.; 1840), and W. J. 

Bentley’s “Diary” (4 v.; 1905-14). T , , 4 . , 

For Rhode Island, W. E. Foster’s “Stephen Hopkins (Rhode Island Historical 
Tracts, 1884) is especially valuable. In New Hampshire William Plumer did not enter 
public life till the end of this period, but his son’s “Life of William Plumer (1856) 
shows political conditions as he found them. Simeon E. Baldwin s Life and Letters 
of Simeon Baldwin” (1919) presents Connecticut politics as viewed by a young 
lawyer after 1786. There are two lives of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, that by I. W. 
Stuart (1859), and the much better work by Jonathan Trumbull ( I 9 1 9 )- W. G. 
Brown’s “Life of Oliver Ellsworth” (1905) and L. H. Boutell s Life of Roger Sher¬ 
man” (1896) deal with men more prominent in national than State attairs. 

Chapter VII: Political Development in the Middle States . 

Newspapers are an even more important source for the political history of the 
Middle States than of New England, for the relations of party leaders and editors 
were close. The Pennsylvania Packet is as valuable for politics as for commerce, 
which is saying much. There should also be named the Pennsylvania Gazette t he 
Freeman's Journal (Philadelphia), the New York Packet Advert, scr. Independent 
Journal, and Independent Gazetteer, and the New Jersey Gazette. 


686 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


There has unfortunately been no monographic history of New York politics under 
George Clinton, but John S'. Jenkins’s “History of Political Parties in New York” 
(1846), which begins with the Revolution, and the first volume of D. S. Alexander’s 
“Political History of the State of New York” (1906), cover the period hurriedly. 
A. C. Flick’s “Loyalism in New York During the Revolution” (1901) has much value. 
While Dixon R. Fox’s “Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York” (1919) 
commences only with the year 1800, it has retrospective passages, as has Howard 
Lee McBain’s monograph on “De Witt Clinton and the Origin of the Spoils System” 
(1907). For New Jersey the only special study of worth is L. Q. C. Elmer’s “Consti¬ 
tution and Government of New Jersey” (2 v.; 1849-72). S. B. Harding’s “Party 
Struggles Over the Pennsylvania Constitution” (1894) is supplemented by W. Roy 
Smith’s “Sectionalism in Pennsylvania During the Revolution” in the Political Science 
Quarterly, vol. 24, pp. 208-235 (1909). 

We have a particularly large array of biographies of leaders of this section. For 
New York, the seven-volume life of Hamilton by J. C. Hamilton, entitled “History of 
the Republic as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton” (1857-64) is the 
outstanding work. The lives of Jay by William Jay (2 v.; 1833) and George Pellew 
(American Statesmen Series, 1890) are both good. William Kent’s “Memoirs and 
Letters of James Kent” (1898) embodies autobiographic material on the struggles 
between federalists and anti-federalists at the close of this period. Gouverneur Morris 
after 1777 gave his services to the nation, not the State, but the lives by Jared Sparks 
(3 v.; 1832) and Theodore Roosevelt (1888), and the “Diary and Letters,” edited by 
Anne Cary Morris (2 v.; 1888) throw light on New York affairs. Isaac Q. Leake’s 
“Memoir of the Life and Times of Gen. John Lamb” (1857) is invaluable. For New 
Jersey history, Theodore Sedgwick’s “William Livingston” (1833) has original papers 
of value, though it is an old-fashioned biography. Almost every prominent figure in 
Pennsylvania politics has had his biographer. Burton Alva Konkle’s “George Bryan 
and the Constitution of Pennsylvania” (1922) is impartial and illuminating. High 
rank must be given to Charles J. Stille’s “Major-General Anthony Wayne” (1893) 
and “Life and Times of John Dickinson” (1891); and to William B. Reed’s able 
“Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed” (2 v.; 1847). Among other works 

are Konkle’s “Life and Times of Thomas Smith, 1745-1809” (1904), which treats of the 
career of a colonel, legislator, and judge; L. Harley’s “Life of Charles Thomson” 
(1900); and William H. Smith’s “St. Clair Papers” (2 v.; 1882). Glimpses of the 
social background are found in J. F. Watson’s entertaining but untrustworthy “Annals 
of Philadelphia,” revised by W. P. Hazard (1898), the “Extracts From the Diary of 
Christopher Marshall, 1774-81,” edited by William Duane (1877), Alexander Gray- 
don’s “Memoirs” (1811), and the “Diary of Jacob Hiltzlieimer, 1765-98” (1893). 
For Delaware the leading biography is William Thompson Read’s “Life and Corre¬ 
spondence of George Read” (1870). 

Chapters VIII and IX: Political Development in the South 

Files of Southern newspapers for this period are few. Chief value attaches to those 
of the Maryland lournal, published in Baltimore by William Goddard, a noted jour¬ 
nalist, and the South Carolina Gazette (the name varies slightly in form at different 
periods) which had been founded in 1733 and paid close attention to politics. 

Monographs on Maryland history are numerous and excellent. B. W. Bond’s “State 
Government in Maryland, 1777-81” (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 23, 1905), George 
Petrie’s “Church and State in Maryland” {Idem, vol. 10, 1892), and B. C. Steiner’s 
“Western Maryland in the Revolution” (vol. 20, 1902) are all careful studies from the 
sources. For Virginia, Eckenrode’s “The Revolution in Virginia” is the principal 
guide. In addition, we have C. H. Ambler’s “Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 
1861,” of which the first chapter treats this period; J. A. C. Chandler’s “History of 
Representation in Virginia” (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 14, 1896) and “History of 
Suffrage in Virginia” {Idem, vol. 19, 1901); James Parton’s “Thomas Jefferson, A 
Reformer of Old Virginia” {Atlantic Monthly, July, 1872); Eckenrode’s “Separation 
of Church and State in Virginia” (1909) and Gaillard Hunt’s “James Madison and 
Religious Liberty” (American Hist. Association Report, 1901); and the interesting 
characterizations of political leaders in Hugh Blair Grigsby’s “The Virginia Federal 
Convention of 1788” (2 v.; 1890-91). 

Especially valuable monographs upon North Carolina are H. M. Wagstaff’s “State 
Rights and Parties in North Carolina 1776-1831” (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 24, 
1906), and Stephen B. Weeks’s “Church and State in North Carolina” {Idem, vol. 
II, 1893). W. D. Cooke’s “Revolutionary History of North Carolina” (1853) is a 
sketchy treatise on military affairs. The only important monograph touching South 
Carolina politics in this period is William A. Schaper’s “Sectionalism and Repre¬ 
sentation in South Carolina” (1901). McCrady’s two fine volumes on South Carolina 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


687 


in the Revolution (1901-02) unfortunately conclude his work, and a continuation 
beyond 1783 is highly desirable. Ulrich B. Phillips presents a study of “The South 
Carolina Federalists” in the American Historical Review, vol. 14, 1909. By the same 
author we have “Georgia and State Rights” (1902), which begins with the year 1788, 
but contains retrospective material. 

Biographies are again numerous. The best in the Maryland field is B. C. Steiner’s 
“Life and Correspondence of James McHenry” (1907). Kate M. Rowland’s “Life of 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton” (2 v.; 1898) is as valuable as could be expected in the 
case of a statesman who was accustomed to destroy all his letters. Henry Wheaton’s 
“Account of the Life, Writings, and Speeches of William Pinkney” (1826) is much 
better than the “Life of William Pinkney” by his nephew, William Pinkney (1853). A 
good account of Samuel Chase would fill a decided lacuna. It is not necessary to men¬ 
tion at length the well-known lives of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and 
R. H. Lee; Moncure D. Conway’s “Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph” (1888); R. 
H. Lee’s “Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee” (2 v.; 1825); Kate M. Row¬ 
land’s “Life of George Mason” (2 v.; 1892); and the first two volumes of Albert J. 
Beveridge’s “Life of John Marshall” (1916). Lyon G. Tyler’s “Letters and Times of 
the Tylers” (3 v.; 1884-96) is a valuable collection of materials commencing with the 
outset of the Revolution. 

Much the best biography for North Carolina’s history is G. J. McRee’s “Life and 
Correspondence of James Iredell” (2 v.; 1857-58). F. M. Hubbard’s “Life of William 
R. Davie” is one of the best essays in the Library of American Biography edited by 
Jared Sparks (2d series, vol. 15, 1844-48). In the North Carolina Booklet will be 
found brief biographies of outstanding Revolutionary figures in North Carolina, such 
as T. M. Pittman’s “John Penn” (vol. 4). A biography of John Rutledge is much 
needed. A series of his letters is printed in the South Carolina Historical and Gene¬ 
alogical Magazine, 1917, and there is a sketch in Henry Flanders’s “Lives and Times 
of the Chief Justices” (2 v.; 1881). David Duncan Wallace’s “Life of Henry 
Laurens” (1915) is thorough, but Laurens had little to do with State politics after 
1777. A sketch of Alexander Gillon is presented in the South Carolina Historical and 
Genealogical Magazine, vol. 9 (1908). In addition, the student may consult Joseph 
Johnson’s “Traditions and Reminiscences of the American Revolution” (1851); John 
Drayton’s “Memoirs of the American Revolution” (2 v.; 1821); William Moultrie’s 
“Memoirs of the American Revolution” (2 v.; 1802); William Gilmore Simms’s “Life 
of Francis Marion” (1844); and G. W. Greene’s “Life of Nathanael Greene” (3 v.; 
1867-71). C. C. Jones’s “Biographical Sketches of the Delegates from Georgia to the 
Continental Congress” (1891) is disappointing. 


Chapter X: Progress in Liberalism and Social Reform 

For social changes the most illuminating single source is the newspapers. Files of 
early magazines, particularly the Columbian and American Museum, should be con¬ 
sulted. Early volumes of travel are important: Brissot de Warville, “New 1 ravels in 
the United States” (1792); F. J. de Chastellux, “Travels in North America in 
1780-82” (1828); Charles H. Sherrill’s “French Memories of Eighteenth Century 

America” (1915); Thomas Coke’s “Journal of His Fourth Tour” (1792); Thomas 
Cooper, “Some Information Respecting America” (1794); W. Mathews’s “Historical 
Review of North America” (2 v.; 1789); and Henry Wansey s Excursion to the 
United States in 1794” ('2d ed.; 1798). W. Winterbotham’s “Historical, Geographical, 
Commercial, and Philosophical View of the American United States (4 v.; 1795 ) 1S 


valuable. . ,, , , 

The best) general treatises on slavery are Henry Wilson s Rise and Fall of the 
Slave Power in America” (3 v.; 1872-77), colored by strong Northern prejudices; 
Ulrich B. Phillips’s “American Negro Slavery” (1918), fair in tone; J. Z. Georges 
“Political History of Slavery” (1915), a sketchy work; G. W. Williams s Negro Race 
in America” (2 v.; 1883); W. E. B. DuBois, “Suppression of the African Slave 
Trade” (1904); and G. M. Stroud, “Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery (2d ed.; 

Among the monographs on special phases of slavery are G. H. Moore, Slavery in 
Massachusetts,” which shows that there was little anti-slavery sentiment in Massa¬ 
chusetts before the Revolution; B. C. Steiner, “History of Slavery in Connecticut 
(Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. II, 1893); W. D. Johnston, ‘Slavery in Rhode Island, 
1755-76,” in Rhode Island Historical Society Pubs., n. s., vol. 2; A. J. Northrup s 
brief essay on “Slavery in New York” in N. Y. State Library Report for 1900; E. V. 
Morgan, “Slavery in New York,” Amer. Hist. Association Papers, V (1891); H. S. 
Coolev “Slavery in New Jersey” (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 14, 1896); E. R. 
Turner', ‘flTery in Pennsylvania” Richard R. Wright Jr. •‘The Negro m 

Pennsylvania” (1912); J. R. Brackett, “The Negro in Maryland (1889), William 


688 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


Pinkney, “Speech in the Maryland House of Delegates, 1789”; Philip Slaughter, 
“The Virginia History of African Colonization” (1855); J. C. Ballagh, “History of 
Slavery in Virginia” (1902); B. B. Munford’s “Virginia’s Attitude Toward Slavery” 
(1909); and J. S. Bassett’s “Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina” (Johns Hopkins 
Studies, vol. 16, 1898). 

Upon church and state, see S. B. Weeks’s “Church and State in North Carolina” 
(1810), (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. II, 1893); R. B. Semple’s “Rise and Progress 
of the Baptists in Virginia,” enlarged by G. W. Beale (1894); Philip Schaff’s 
“Church and State in the United States” (1888), a treatise on the first amendment 
to the Constitution; Isaac Backus, “History of New England, With Particular Refer¬ 
ence to . . . the Baptists,” a work by a liberal-minded minister (3 v.; 1777-96); E. 
W. Carruthers, “Life and Character of the Rev. David Caldwell” (1842); W. H. 
Foote’s “Sketches of North Carolina” (1846) and “Sketches of Virginia” (1855), both 
on the Presbyterian Church; J. M. Buckley’s “History of Methodism” (1897); C. C. 
Tiffany, “History of the Protestant Episcopal Church” (1895); F. L. Hawkes, “Contri¬ 
butions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States.” (2 v.; 1836-39); Thomas 
O’Gorman, “History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States” (1897); 
H. J. Eckenrode’s “Separation of Church and State in Virginia” (1910) ; and C. F. 
James, “Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia” 
(1900). 

For reforms in the criminal law, see the pamphlet by William Bradford, “An In¬ 
quiry How far the Punishment of Death is necessary in Pennsylvania” (1793)- See 
also the essays by Dr. Benjamin Rush in the American Museum, volumes II and IV. 
Consult J. B. McMaster, “Old Standards of Public Morals” ( Amer. Hist. Review, 
II, 515) for corruption in political life. 

The only satisfactory treatise on American prison reform is O. F. Lewis’s “De¬ 
velopment of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776-1845” (1923). Students 
should also consult F. H. Wines’s “Punishment and Reformation” (enlarged edition, 
1919); the first reports of the Prison Discipline Society; the anonymous “Account of 
the State Prison in the City of New York, 1801”; Harry E. Barnes, “History of the 
Penal, Reformatory, and Correctional Institutions of New Jersey”; G. Haynes, “Pic¬ 
tures from Prison Life”; F. C. Gray, “Prison Discipline in America”; “Penal and 
Charitable Institutions of Pennsylvania” (2 v.; 1897); F. B. Sanborn, “The Poor 
Laws of New England,” in the North American Review, April, 1868; and John Cum¬ 
mings, “Poor Laws of Massachusetts and New York” (1895). 

Among the general authorities on education are Paul Monroe, “Cyclopaedia of Edu¬ 
cation” (1911-13); E. G. Dexter, “History of Education in the United States” (1904); 
Ellwood P. Cubberley, “Public Education in the United States” (1919); Richard G. 
Boone, “Education in the United States; Its History” (1889); and F. P. Graves, 
“Education in Modern Times” (1913). It is impossible here to list the dozens of 
monographs upon education in the various States; the general histories just named 
and the A. L. A. Guide contain references to them. 

Chapter XI: Financial History of the States 

The fullest work upon American financial history is A. S. Bolles’s “Financial His¬ 
tory of the United States” (3 v.; 1879-85), the first volume of which covers the years 
1774-89; a treatise of great research and good judgment. D. R. Dewey’s “Financial 
History of the United States” (1903), Chapter II, is valuable. The best monograph 
on this period is C. J. Bullock’s “Finances of the United States, 1775-89,” written 
with special reference to the national budget. Two useful biographies are E. P. 
Oberholtzer’s “Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier” (1903), and W. G. Sumner, 
“The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution” (2 v.; 1891), which is ill- 
arranged but full of material nowhere else easily procurable. 

Two conflicting views of the Continental and State paper issues are represented by 
Samuel Breck’s “Historical Sketch of Continental Paper Money” (1843), which de¬ 
fends them as in effect only a moderate tax upon the people, and Henry Bronson’s 
“Historical Account of Connecticut Currency, Continental Money, and Finances of the 
Revolution” (New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, I; 1865), which is more 
scholarly, and harshly criticizes the issues. Henry Phillips’s “Historical Sketches of 
the Paper Currency of the American Colonies Prior to the Adoption of the Federal 
Constitution” (2 v.; 1865-66) is full of material. J. W. Schuckers’s “Brief Account 
of the Finances and Paper Money of the Revolutionary War” (1870) is a good 
sketch, though only a sketch, coming down to 1790. W. G. Sumner’s “History of 
American Currency” (1874), gives a few pages to the Continental paper money, the 
Bank of North America, and the paper money agitation of 1785-86. A better book is 
A. Barton Hepburn’s “A History of Currency in the United States” (revised edition, 
1915). W. M. Gouge’s “Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the United 
States” (1833) is badly arranged, but still a standard authority. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


689 

Of works by contemporaries several are valuable. Tench Coxe’s “View of the 
United States of America” (1794) is a series of papers published 1787-94, exhibiting 
the position of American commerce and manufactures. Peletiah Webster’s “Political 
Essays on the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finance, and Other Subjects” 
(1791) criticizes the paper issues harshly, treats of tender acts, and covers taxation. 
Timothy Pitkin’s “Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States” (1835) has 
good tables. 

The four standard works thus far published on banking, none of which is of great 
value for State financial history, are W. G. Sumner’s “History of Banking in the 
United States” (1896), Charles A. Conant’s “History of Modern Banks of Issue” 
(1896), J. J. Knox’s “History of Banking in the United States” (1900), and C. F. 
Dunbar’s “Theory and History of Banking” (1896). 

For State finances see T. Pitkin’s “History of the United States” (2 v.; 1828); 
American State Papers, Finances, I; J. H. Hollander, “Studies in State Taxation,” 
referring especially to the Southern States (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 18, 1900); 
C. H. J. Douglas, “Financial History of Massachusetts” (Columbia University Studies, 
1891); D. C. Sowers, “Financial History of New York” (Columbia Studies, vol. 17); 
H. S. Hanna, “Financial History of Maryland, 1789-1848)) (Johns Hopkins Studies, 
vol. 25); A Citizen of Maryland, “Short History of the Public Debt of Maryland” 
(1845); W. Z. Ripley, “Financial History of Virginia, 1609-1776” (Columbia Uni¬ 
versity Studies, vol. 4); W. L. Royall, “History of Virginia Banks” (1907); W. K. 
Boyd, “Currency and Banking in North Carolina, 1790-1836” (Trinity College His¬ 
torical Papers); W. F. Dodd, “Effect of the Adoption of the Constitution on the 
Finances of Virginia” (Va. Hist. Magazine, vol. 10); Louise A. Reams, “Taxation in 
Virginia During the Revolution” (Richmond College Hist. Papers, June, 1917); T. R. 
Snively, “Taxation of Negroes in Virginia” (Univ. of Virginia Publications, 1916). 


Chapter XII: State Quarrels and Friendships 

Wm. Gordon’s “Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the 
United States” (4 v.; 1788) gives some attention to ill-feeling between men of differ¬ 
ent Colonies. So does Joseph Galloway’s “Historical and Political Reflections on the 
Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion” (1780). The Federalist is much con¬ 
cerned with it; see especially No. 23. The principal materials, however, are to be 
found in the “Works” of John Adams, especially volumes 2, 7, and 9; Madison’s 
“Writings” (Hunt ed.), volumes 1 and 2; Monroe’s “Writings,” volume 1; Wash¬ 
ington’s writings and Jared Sparks’s “Letters to Washington” (4 v.; 1853); and the 
collected works of R. H. Lee, Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King, Dickinson, Hamilton, 
and Patrick Henry. The “Correspondence and Journals of S. B. Webb,” edited by 
W. C. Ford (3 v.; 1894), the “Army Correspondence of John Laurens” (Bradford 
Club, 1867), Alexander Graydon’s “Memoirs” (1811), and William Moultrie’s 
“Memoirs” (2 v.; 1802) are enlightening contemporary documents. > 

For boundary disputes, in addition to the footnote references, see D. Goodlc>e s 
“North Carolina and Georgia Boundary,” in North Carolina Booklet, volume 3; “Re¬ 
port of the Committee on the Western Boundary of Maryland” (in the Fund Publi¬ 
cations, Maryland Historical Society, No. 29); Neville B. Craig, The Olden Time 
(2 v.; 2846-48) for matter on the Pennsylvania boundary disputes; C. W. Bowen, 
“Boundary Disputes of Connecticut” (1882), a scholarly monograph; and the Regents^ 
Boundary Commission, “Report upon the New York and Pennsylvania Boundary 
(1886), with the two supplementary volumes of documents, “Report on the Bounda¬ 
ries of the State of New York” (1874-84). The bearing of the western lands upon 
State relations is best treated in H. B. Adams, “Maryland’s Influence upon Land 
Cessions in the United States” (Johns Hopkins Studies, III, 1885), corrected and 
supplemented by chapter 2 of B. W. Bond’s “State Government in Maryland (Johns 
Hopkins Studies, XXIII, 1905). See also the references for chapter 14 of this book. 

The Wyoming question may be studied in Charles Miner, “History of Wyoming 
(1845), a gossipy but full book; George Peck, “Wyoming; Its History Stirring Inci¬ 
dents, and Romantic Adventures” (1858); S. G. Fisher, “The Making of Pennsylvania 
(1896); Octavius Pickering, “Life of Timothy Pickering, vol. 2 (4 v.;1867-73); 
Fairfield County Historical Society Reports, 1896-97; O. J. Harvey, History of 
Wilkes-Barre” (3 v.; 1909-10); and the documentary records of Pennsylvania. For 
the Vermont question see the “Records of the Governor and Council of Vermont 
(8 v.; 1873-80); the “Vermont State Papers” (1823); the “Collections of the Vermont 
Historical Society especially volume 2 which contains extracts from the Haldiman 
Paoers^ the^“ProceedTngs” of the same body; B. H. Hall’s able “History of Eastern 
Vermont” (2 v; 1S58); Hiland Hall, “History of Vermont” (1868); and Ira Allen, 
‘‘Natural and Political History of the State of _ Vermont” (.898) The best single 
work on the Mississippi question is F. A. Ogg 3 The Opening of the Mississippi. 


THE AMERICAN STATES 


690 

A Struggle for Supremacy in the American Interior” (1904), which contains refer¬ 
ences for further study. See also chapter 7 of Gaillard Hunt’s “Life of James Madi¬ 
son” (1902). 

The first chapter of the “History of Transportation in the United States Before 
i860” by Caroline E. MacGill and others (Carnegie Institution; 1917) treats modes 
and difficulties of communication. Commercial relations may also be studied in W. 
Hill’s “First Stages of the Tariff Policy” (Publications of the Amer. Econ. Associa¬ 
tion, VIII, No. 6), W. C. Fisher’s “American Trade Regulations Before 1789” (Amer. 
Hist. Association Papers, III, 467-493), and Victor S. Clark’s “History of Manufac¬ 
tures in the United States, 1607-1860” (Carnegie Institution, 1916). 

Chapter XIII: Relations of the States with Congress 

The principal general studies of the growth of nationality 1783-89 are familiar. 
They are John B. McMaster’s “History of the People of the United States” (vol. 1; 
1883); George Bancroft’s “History of the Formation of the Constitution” (2 v.; 1882); 
John Fiske’s “Critical Period of American History” (1888); Edward Channing’s 
“History of the United States,” volume 3 (1916); and A. C. McLaughlin’s “The 
Confederation and the Constitution” (American Nation Series, 1905). Material of 
value may be found in John Brown Scott’s “The United States: A Study in Inter¬ 
national Organization” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 1920). The 
principal sources are equally well known. Supplementing the Journals of Congress, 
Elliott’s “Debates,” and the Federalist, we have Max Farrand’s “Records of the Fed¬ 
eral Convention” (3 v.; 1911), and the “Documentary History of the Constitution” 
(State Department; 1894). 

Commercial problems as they affected the idea of union are treated in Eugene A. 
Schuyler’s “American Diplomacy and the Furtherance of Commerce” (1886), and in 
S. F. Bemis’s work on “Jay’s Treaty” (1923), especially chapter 2. State laws on 
commerce are summarized in the British Privy Council Report contained in the 
“Collection of Interesting and Important Reports and Papers on Navigation and Trade 
of Great Britain ... in the West Indies and America” (1807). Excellent studies of 
the British debts, and the British seizures of slaves, are found in the Annual Reports 
of the American Historical Association—A. C. McLaughlin’s “British Posts and West¬ 
ern Debts” (1894), and F. A. Ogg’s “Jay’s Treaty and the Slavery Interests” (1901). 

Bearing directly on the writing and adoption of the Constitution are Max Farrand’s 
“The Framing of the Constitution” (1913) and “Fathers of the Constitution” (1920), 
and Allen Johnson’s “Union and Democracy” (1915). Charles A. Beard’s “Economic 
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States” (1913) summarized the con¬ 
clusions to which one school of writers had long been tending. J. F. Jameson’s 
“Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States” (1889) offers five papers 
on such topics as the development of the executive departments, and the movement for 
a second constitutional convention. A study of the relations between the States and 
Congress in 1774-75 is presented in Albion W. Small’s “Beginnings of American 
Nationality” (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. 8, 1890), based on a close study of the 
Journals of Congress. A fuller study of the same subject is given in C. H. Van Tyne’s 
“Sovereignty in the American Revolution,” in the American Historical Review, 
volume 12. G. T. Curtis’s “History of the Constitution” (2 v.; 1854) is valuable. 

The ratification of the Constitution is discussed in O. G. Libby’s “Geographical 
Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution” (1894), 
which showed how clear was the economic cleavage between rural and commercial 
interests; S. B. Harding, “Ratification of the Constitution in Massachusetts’ ’(1896), 
which also contains much matter on State politics; A. E. Morse, “The Federal Party 
in Massachusetts to 1800” (1909); J. P. Warren, “The Confederation and the Shays’s 
Rebellion” ( American Historical Review, vol. II, 42 ff.); J. C. Welling, “Connecticut 
Federalism,” in “Addresses, Lectures, and Other Papers” (1904); F. G. Bates, “Rhode 
Island and the Formation of the Union” (1898); J. B. McMaster and F. B. Stone, 
“Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution” (1888); H. B. Grigsby, “History of the 
Virginia Federal Convention of 1788” (2 v.; 1890-91), supplemented by A. J. 

Beveridge’s “Life of John Marshall,” chapters 9 and 10 of volume 1 (1916), and 
C. H. Ambler’s “Sectionalism in Virginia” (1910); U. B. Phillips, “The South Caro¬ 
lina Federalists,” in the American Historical Reinew, vol. 14 (1909); and C. L. Raper, 
“Why North Carolina at First Refused to Ratify the Federal Constitution” (Ameri¬ 
can Historical Association Report, 1905). 

Chapter XIV: Facing Westward; Conclusion 

Much material on both] the Northwest and Southwest is to be found in the publi¬ 
cations of State historical societies. For western North Carolina and Tennessee see 
the James Sprunt Historical Monographs (1900-) and Tenessee Historical Maga- 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


691 


sine (1915-)• For western Virginia and Kentucky see the Virginia Magazine of 

History .and Biography (1893-) and Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 

(1902-). The Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 

Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, Collections of the Illinois State 
Historical Library, Publications of the Indiana Historical Society, Collections and 
Researches of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, and Collections of the 
Wisconsin State Historical Society, are all valuable. 

The most scientific account of the westward movement before 1775 is contained in 
C. W. Alvord’s “Mississippi Valley in British Politics,” before mentioned. It is 
supplemented by the two volumes by Alvord and Carter cited in the notes, G. H. 
Alden’s “New Governments West of the Alleghenies Before 1780” (1897), M. M. 
Quaife’s “Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835” (1913), and Justin Winsor’s 
“The Westward Movement: The Colonies and the Republic West of the Alleghenies, 
1763-1798” (1897), a careful book, but dull. Roosevelt’s “Winning of the West” 
(4 v.; 1889-96) covers the years 1763-1807. It is written with engaging vigor and 
color, but is not wholly accurate, and slights social and economic aspects of Western 
settlement. F. J. Turner’s “Significance of the Frontier in American History” 
(Wisconsin Historical Society, 1894) and “Western State Making in the Revolution¬ 
ary Era” ( American} Historical Review, 1895-96) are essays of interpretative depth. 
Archibald Henderson’s “The Conquest of the Old Southwest” (1920) is the condensed 
result of thorough research. 

The best State histories bearing material on western expansion are volume 1 of the 
Centennial History of Illinois, C. W. Alvord’s “The Illinois Country” (1920); Logan 
Esarey’s “History of Indiana” (1915); Robert M. McElroy’s “Kentucky in the 
Nation’s History” (1909), which gives a chapter to Transylvania; R. H. Collins’s 
“Kentucky” (2 v.; last ed., 1882), a full history of the gazetteer type; John Haywood’s 
“Civil and Political History of Tennessee” (1823); and James G. Ramsay’s “Annals 
of Tennessee” (1853), a documentary record. Humphrey Marshall’s “History of 
Kentucky” (2 v.; 1824) is partisan but valuable as the work of a man who entered 
Kentucky in 1780. The histories of Ohio by Rufus King (1888) and Michigan by 
T. M. Cooley (1885) in the American Commonwealth Series are good. W. H. Foote’s 
“Sketches of North Carolina” (1845) is ill-arranged and deals mainly with the 
western part of the State. J. W. Caldwell’s “Studies in the Constitutional History 
of Tennessee” (1895) is a series of essays. ... 

Bearing particularly upon the westward movement in the older States are F. W. 
Halsey’s “Old New York Frontier” (1901); O. Turner’s “Pioneer History of the 
Holland Purchase in Western New York” (1850) and ‘“Pioneer Settlement of Phelps 



L. P. Summers’s “History ..— - - - ■ v»"a tj- j 1 » 

Upon the Ordinance of 1787 there exists a small library. B. A. Hinsdale s The 
Old Northwest” (1888) is comprehensive. D. G. McCarty’s “Territorial Governors of 



Adams’s “Maryland’s Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States” (Johns 
Hopkins Studies, vol. 3, 1885), has been mentioned. Thomas Donaldsons report on 
“The Public Domain” (1884), made for the Public Land Commission, is useful but 

Biographies and monographs are too numerous to be named in full. There a £ e 
lives ot Manasseh Cutler, by W. P. and J. P. Cutler 0 888), and Rufus Putnam by 
Mary Cone (1886); while we have Rowena Buell s Memoirs of Rufus Putnam 
(1903). The best lives of Boone are by Reuben Gold Thwaites (1911) and Stewart 
Edward White (1922). A. B. Hulbert has written Boones Wilderness Road (1903) 

a E „r^nI *o e £ 'iUlgjl ** a L,f Colo S „wea r ,; 'SSL? 

088 7 ) S o P r £ hi S r “Advance Guard of Western Civilization" (.888) the latte. ( dealing 
„ith Jan.es Robertson . A sketch o^^r^ I.fe P««taW. ^ o( ^ ^ 
Claire Papers (2 v., 1882). Lo r dJJunm< „ Family » (lggo)> s> b . Wee ks’s 

lution treated m • • ^ istorical Association Report, 1893) is valuable for 

Joseph Martin (A Thwaites an d L. P. Kellogg have compiled a “Documentary 
S“f CLre^ "and.the,Spanish conspiracies are dealt with in 

F. A. Ogg’s “The Opening of the Mississippi (1904)- 















INDEX 


Acts of Trade. See Commerce. 

Adams, John, on Caucus Club, 13; 
radical, 15; on ecclesiastical align¬ 
ment, 21; on committees of corre¬ 
spondence, 31; and McDougall, 55 > 
on outrages, 66; on army before 
Boston, 69; on assumption of gov¬ 
ernment, 88; and Pennsylvania, 98- 
103, 106, 150, 250W., and Locke, 

121; as political scientist, 121; in¬ 
fluence on State Constitutions, 122- 
125, 161; and Paine, 123; on at¬ 
titude of South, i23n.; and resolu¬ 
tion for State governments, 125; 
and suffrage, 140; on Virginia, 143 1 
on overthrow of conservatives, 145; 
and popular vote on Constitution, 
177; and Massachusetts Constitu¬ 
tion, 179, 211; on Reed, 258; on 
Livingston, 302; on Chase, 313; on 
J. Rutledge, 370; and education, 
467, 468; on taxation, 492; on 
prejudice against New England, 55 °> 
551; and Washington, 551 1 provin¬ 
cialism, 555 5 and Dickinson, 555 « ; ; 
and free trade, 557; on diplomatic 
impotence, 564^.; on spirit of Con¬ 
gress, 607; on policy of Con¬ 
gress, 608-610; and Maryland, 611; 
on price-fixing, 617; an d confedera¬ 
tion, 624; and apportionment, 625; 
and equal vote in Congress, 625; 
and loyalist rights under treaty, 
645; on treaty violations, 652. 

Adams, Mrs. John, on Hancock, 215. 

Adams, John Quincy, on Hancock- 
Bowdoin campaign, 220. 

Adams, Samuel, Junto, 13; radical, 
15; and town meetings, 30; . com - 
mittees of correspondence, 31; inter¬ 
colonial committee, 3 2 ; essays 
(1773), 33; and independence, 33W.; 
and delegates to Congress, 35 5 and 
Quakers, 100; Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179, 211 ; on need of ^in¬ 
stitution, 181; as State leader, 208, 
faction and opponents, 210, 212, 
213; in General Court, 214; and 


Shays’s rebels, 218; and ratification, 
235; and Lieutenant-Governorship, 
242, 243; Governor, 243; and Han¬ 
cock, 243; and religious establish¬ 
ment, 422; and loyalist treaty 
rights, 561. 

Albany, population, 49. 

Allen, Ethan, at siege of Boston, 68; 
Ticonderoga, 79; and Congress and 
Vermont, 581; and Wyoming, 589- 

Allen, James, on paper money, 251. 

Allen, John, proscribed, 254. 

Allen, William, proscribed, 254; and 
College, 264, 265. 

Alsop, John, Continental Congress, 
57; and commercial amendment, 
283. 

Alston, Joseph, income, 369. 

American Revolution, preliminaries in 
Massachusetts, 4; Pennsylvania con¬ 
servatism, 9; local grievances, 16-26; 
principal causes, 24, 38; and Im¬ 
perialism, 26, 38; New England 
preparations, 66-71, 79> 80; prep¬ 
arations elsewhere, 71 - 74 , 81-83; 

general war, 108; discontent of 
troops, 258, 260, 266, 267, 2 78 ; 
provincialism in army, 548 - 55 1 5 
military remissness of States, com¬ 
plaints, 574-576; problem of keep¬ 
ing up army, 611-616, 626; problem 
of supplies, 616; commutation of 
half pay, 634, 635; Newburgh Ad¬ 
dress, 635; States and expenditures, 
659; bounty land, 672. 

Ames, Fisher, and ratification, 235; on 
State imposts, 556. 

Amis, Thomas, Spanish seizure, 346. 
Annapolis, retains capital, 317; and 
paper money, 53 2 • . 

Annapolis Convention, New York, 
and, 284, 289; origin, 317, 5 * 2 - 
Arbuthnot, Marriot, Charleston siege, 

375 - 

Aristocracy, colonial, 12, 42; over¬ 
throw, 444. See also Entail; Primo¬ 
geniture. 

Armstrong, John, and Wyoming, 279. 





INDEX 


694 

Army. See American Revolution. 

Arnold, Benedict, Ticonderoga, 79; 
Virginia invasion, 330-332. 

Arnold, Jonathan, delegate, and con¬ 
federate impost, 227, 631-634; and 
ratification, 238. 

Arnold, Welcome, Wyoming commis¬ 
sioner, 586. 

Articles of Confederation, States and 
impost amendments, 191, 226-228, 
283-289, 317, 336, 343 , 387 , 388, 390, 
396, 397, 407, 477 , 56 i, 578, 630- 
634, 637-642; States and commer¬ 
cial amendment, 282, 283, 407, 556, 
563, 601, 642-644; question of need, 
621, 623, 624; plans, 622; issues in 
drafting, 624-626; value, 624, 625; 
why weak, 624; provisions, 626; 
military failure, 626; movements to 
strengthen, 627-630, 661; State vio¬ 
lation, 658. 

Ashe, J. B., congressman, 410. 

Ashe, S. A., on Caswell, 364^. 

Ashe, Samuel, as judge, 364. 

Asiento, and colonial slave trade, 445. 

Atkinson, George, campaigns, 220, 221. 

Augusta, during war, 412-415. 

Avery, John, election, 213. 

Avery, Waightstill, attorney-general, 
364».; and taxation, 502. 

Backus, Isaac, on religious establish¬ 
ment, 422 n. 

Baldwin, Abraham, Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 419; and slave trade, 451. 

Baldwin, Simeon, and anti-federalists, 
240. 

Ballot, New York movement, i6o«. 

Baltimore, and Provincial Convention, 
41; and capital, 317; ratification 
contest, 319; in election of 1788, 
321; as interstate port, 556, 562; 
trade and Pennsylvania paper 
money, 572. 

Bank of England, Maryland’s stock, 
311, 5o6«. 

Bank of North America, charter con¬ 
troversy, 280; recharter, 292; and 
Maryland trade, 572. 

Baptist Church, and establishment, 
421, 423-425, 432, 433, 437. 

Bartlett, Josiah, Provincial Congress, 
39; Governor, 241. 

Bassett, Burwell, and treaty obliga¬ 
tions, 653. 

Bayard, John, and Constitution, 154; 
on tax arrears, 514. 

Beaufort, S. C., assembly at, 19. 


Beccaria, Marchese di, influence in 
America, 455. 

Bee, Thomas, Lieutenant-Governor, 
373; and Thompson, 401. 

Belknap, Jeremy, on equality in New 
England, 2 n.; on first Constitution, 
134; on Weare, 208; on paper 
money, 480; on loyalists, 646, 647. 

Benezet, Anthony, and slavery, 448. 

Benson, Egbert, leader, 246; and 
Clinton’s Administration, 249; Rut¬ 
gers vs. Waddington, 270; Conti¬ 
nental Congress, 283, and Federal 
Convention, 290; Federal Congress, 
301; and slavery, 449. 

Benthem, Jeremy, on criminal code, 
452 . 

Bibliography, sources, 679, 680; State 
histories, 681, 682; colonial, 682; 
transitional, 682, 683; biographical, 
683, 685-687, 691; constitutional, 
683-685; political, 685-687; social, 
687, 688; financial, 688, 689; inter¬ 
state relations, 689, 690; Congress 
and States, 690; frontier, 690, 691. 

Biddle, Charles, Vice-President, 281. 

Biddle, Edward, on Constitutionalists, 
259«.; Anti-Constitutionalist paper, 
261; and College, 264. 

Bignal, Robert, Council Extraordinary, 
381. 

Bingham, William, on sectional re¬ 
publics, 603. 

Biographies, bibliography, 683, 685- 
687, 691. 

Bland, Richard, and non-intercourse, 
27, 63; and military preparations, 
72; Whigism, 77; and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 135; conservative leader, 
326. 

Bland, Theodoric, and Randolph, 340; 
and ratification, 350, 352; and free 
navigation of the Mississippi, 565. 

Bloodworth, Timothy, radical leader, 
361; and ratification, 408; defeated 
for Senate, 410; congressman, 410. 

Blount, William, Federal Convention, 
406; and ratification, 408; terri¬ 
torial Governor, 671. 

Board of War, North Carolina, 379- 
381. 

Bond, Thomas, and College, 265. 

Boone, Daniel, in Kentucky, 667. 

Boston, Caucus Club, 13; town meet¬ 
ings and agitation, 29-31; committee 
of correspondence, 31; and impris¬ 
onment for debt, 457; as interstate 
port, 556; and confederate trade 



INDEX 695 


regulation, 643. See also next 
titles. 

Boston, siege of, 68, 69; Connecticut 
troops, 79. 

Boston Massacre, 30. 

Boston Port Bill, 34; New York and, 
52 - 54 , 56 . 

Botetourt, Lord, as Governor, 10; 

and Burgesses, 27. 

Boudinot, Elias, Provincial Conven¬ 
tion, 45. 

Boundaries, State disputes, 17, 547 , 
590, 591; confederate control over 
State, 625; bibliography, 689. See 
also Vermont; Western claims; 
Wyoming. 

Bowdoin, James, conservative, 1.5; and 
Council, 34; Constitutional Conven¬ 
tion, 179; as State leader, 208; fac¬ 
tion and defeats, 212, 214; position, 
213, 213W.; and Shays’s Rebellion, 
217, 536; contest and election 

(1785), 215-217; reelection, 217; 
campaign and defeat (1787), 218- 
220; and ratification, 235; campaign 
of 1789, 242, 243; and foreign trade 
retaliation, 564; and confederate 
trade regulation, 643; on Congress, 
661. 

Bowen, Jabez, and ratification, 238. 
Brackenridge, H. H., and free navi¬ 
gation of the Mississippi, 567 - 
Bradford, William, of Pennsylvania, 
and criminal code, 455- 
Bradford, William, of Rhode Island, 
candidacy, 231, 232; and ratifica¬ 
tion, 238; Speaker, and confederate 
impost, 633. 

Braxton, Carter, constitutional pam¬ 
phlet, 125; and suffrage, 140; con¬ 
servative leader, 326; on Yankees, 
602. 

Brearly, Daniel, Wyoming commis¬ 
sioner, 586. . , 

Breckenridge, John, and religious 
establishment, 434. 

Brewton, Miles, house, 369; notes, 487. 
Briar Creek, battle, 373. 

Brissot de Warville, J. P., on religious 
conditions, 42377., 42977. 

British army, quartering questions, 20, 
23, 34; Boston Massacre, 30; in 
New York, 51; supplies from New 
York, 58; Putnam’s opinion about 

troops, 74 - . 

British debts, of colonists, fnction, 24, 
contest over, under treaty, 337 - 339 * 

387, 389, 647-652. 


Broome, John, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 159. 

Brown, Jabez, defeated, 229. 

Brown, John, and treaty obligations, 
653 - 

Brown, Thomas, partisan warfare, 
4 i 5 . 

Brownson, Nathan, Governor, 415. 
Bryan, George, radical, 99, 103, 107> 
140, 185; and framing State Con¬ 
stitution, 150, 151; Vice-President, 
156; Council of Censors, 188; anti¬ 
federalist, 196, 293, 294; and re¬ 
vision of Constitution, 198; in 
Council, 254, 257; and loyalists, 
255; in Assembly, Constitutionalist 
leader, 262, 263; and slavery, 263, 
448; and paper money, 266; and 
Test Act, 277; and ratification, 294; 
and criminal code, 45471., 455 - 
Bryan, William, on military impotence, 

3 6 7 . . _ # 

Bryce, Lord, on American Consti¬ 
tution, 118. 

Bull, William, and war preparations, 
73, 82; return, 393. 

Bulloch, Archibald, agitation, 48; 

President, and Provincial Congress, 
84; and Constitution, 128, 130, 135, 
138; war powers, 207; career, 410; 
death, 411. 

Buncombe, Edward, Provincial Con¬ 
vention, 41. 

Buncombe, Richard, conservative 
leader, 359. , . , 0 . 

Burke, Aedanus, on election (1781), 
38977.; on loyalist persecution, 39m., 
392, 397, 404; on postbellum tur¬ 
moil, 395; and ratification, 408; 

congressman, 410; on sacrifice of 
South, 575; and Love, 647* 

Burke, Edmund, and slavery, 445. 
Burke, Thomas, radical leader, 361; 
Governor, and defense, 382, 383; 
capture, breaks parole, 383, 384; and 
loyalists, 384; on tax in kind, 499; 
on tax collection, 513; on super¬ 
vision of finances, 5i5».; on power 
and status of Continental Congress, 
623, 660. 

Burlington, N. J., free port, 560. 
Burnaby, Andrew, on disjunctive 
spirit, 545. . _ 

Burr, Aaron, leader, 246; campaign of 
1789, 297, 299. . 

Burrington, George, and religious es¬ 
tablishment, 437 - 

I Burroughs, Stephen, exploits, 463. 






INDEX 


696 

Butler, Pierce, Federal Convention, 
405; and ratification, 407; Senator, 
410. 

Byrd, William, on religious conditions 
in North Carolina, 436. 


Cabot, George, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179. 

Cadwalader, John, and loyalists, 255; 
Anti-Constitutionalist paper, 261; 
and College, 264. 

Caldwell, David, and ratification, 409; 
and Catholics, 438. 

Calhoun, Patrick, and ratification, 407. 

Cam, John, and established church, 21. 

Camden, battle, 379. 

Campbell, Sir Archibald, in Georgia, 
412. 

Campbell, Arthur, on Indian agency, 

563**. 

Campbell, Robert, Fort Wilson Riot, 
262. 

Campbell, Sir William, arrival, 82; 
flight, 94. 

Cannon, James, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 150, 151, 154; radical, 185; 
Council of Safety, 253. 

Capitals, controversies, 192; Penn¬ 
sylvania, 292; Maryland, 317; Vir¬ 
ginia, 327, 339; South Carolina, 
404; Georgia, 418. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, and return of 
negroes, 647. 

Carlisle, Abraham, trial and execution, 
256. 

Carmarthen, Lord, and treaty viola¬ 
tions, 652. 

Carroll, Charles (barrister), and fram¬ 
ing Constitution, 135, 157. 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, fee 
controversy, 22; and non-inter¬ 
course, 65; and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 135, 138; and pay of legis¬ 
lature, 309; and loyalists, 311, 650; 
and Chase, 313; and ratification, 
319, 320; Senator, 322; on religious 
establishment, 430; influence of Bec- 
caria, 455; and State loan, 505; 
and paper money, 530, 532; on 
State debt, 543. 

Carroll, Daniel, and ratification, 318, 
319; elected to Congress, 322; and 
paper money, 530, 532. 

Carroll, Nicholas, and ratification, 319. 

Carter, Landon, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 135; on moving capital, 
327 n. 


Cary, Archibald, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 145; and dictatorship, 328. 

Castle Island, sinecure office, 242*2., 
prison, 463. 

Caswell, Richard, Provincial Conven¬ 
tion, 42; Continental Congress, 62 ; 
and framing Constitution, 134, 138, 
141; as Governor, character, 142, 
362, 364; ability, 358; salary, 365; 
on Person, 365*2.,' and defense, 366; 
command, 378, 379; Council Extra¬ 
ordinary, 381; and Martin, 385; 
later candidacy, 386; and Federal 
Convention, 406; and State of 
Franklin, 669. 

Caucus Club, 13. 

Champlin, George, and ratification, 
238. 

Chandler, T. B., on church in Mary¬ 
land, 429. 

Charleston, tea ships, 43; Committee 
of Safety, 65; as social center, 369; 
Prevost’s attack, 373; capture, 374; 
evacuation, 393; democratic ex¬ 
tremists, Gillon, 397-402; and post- 
bellum paper money, Hint Club, 
526; as interstate port, 556. 

Charters, Massachusetts resumption 
of old, 88; and written Constitu¬ 
tions, 117; struggle over, in Penn¬ 
sylvania, 106-108; retention by 
Connecticut and Rhode Island, 164, 
222. See also State Constitutions. 

Chase, Samuel, Continental Congress, 
62; and independence, 133; and 
framing Constitution, 135, 138, 157; 
intercameral quarrel, 309; career 
and character, 312; and Test Act, 
3 i 5 > 3 i 7 ; and paper money, 317; 
and ratification, 318, 320; in elec¬ 
tion of 1788, 321; and Bank of 
England stock, 506*2.; electoral col¬ 
lege, 53 o; and independence, 609; 
on Confederation, 622; and appor¬ 
tionment, 625. 

Chase, William, fee controversy, 22. 

Chatham, Earl of, and Imperialism, 
26. 

Checks and balances. See Separation 
of powers, and departments by 
name. 

Chew, Benjamin, banished, 253. 

Chittenden, Thomas, and Hanover 
Party, 581. 

Choate, Rufus, on Rhode Island boun¬ 
dary, 547. 

Chummage, 458. 

Church of England, establishment, 420, 




INDEX 


429-432, 437-440; in New York, 
426, 427; and New Jersey, 427. 
See also Episcopal Church. 

Cincinnati, Society of the, opposition, 
224. 

Civil code, reform in Pennsylvania, 
455 «- 

Clinton, George (colonial Governor), 
on New York politics, 14. 

Clinton, George, radical, 15; Whig, in 
Assembly, 50; and Tryon’s dam¬ 
ages, 52; Provincial Congress, 86; 
in State service, 207; leader, 245; 
career and character, 246; first cam¬ 
paign for Governor, 247, 248; dur¬ 
ing the war, 248; and loyalists, 268, 
269, 273; and amendment of Ar¬ 
ticles of Confederation, 282, 283, 
286, 287, 289; campaign (1786), 
286; and patronage, 286, 297, 300; 
and Federal Convention, 290; and 
ratification, 291, 300; campaign of 
1789, near defeat, 296-301; and 
federalist influence, 302; and rati¬ 
fication in Virginia, 352 ; and educa¬ 
tion, 467; and paper money, 480, 
485; and taxation, 501, 516; on 
sources of revenue, 509; and tax ar¬ 
rears, 513M.; on State debt, 543; 
on military remissness of States, 

574 - , 

Clinton, Sir Henry, advance up Hud¬ 
son, 248; Charleston, 375. 

Clark, Abraham, and ratification, 305. 

Clark, G. R., Northwestern expedi¬ 
tion, 659, 668. 

Clarke, Elijah, partisan warfare, 415 • 

Clay, Henry, on abolition of entail, 
442. 

Clayton, Joshua, Governor, 307. 

Clearance fee, New York interstate, 

561. 

Club of the Stone House, 242. 

Clymer, George, in Assembly, 105, 
155, 257, 260; and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 149; conservative, 185; and 
Test Act, 292; and ratification, 293; 
and requisitions, 476ft. 

Coercion, policy of Commons, 66. See 
also Reconciliation. 

Colden, Cadwallader, on classes, 12; 
on politics, 14; character, 20; 
charges against, 20; on colonial at¬ 
titude, 25; on people and troops, 51; 
on non-importation, 5 1 ”-; on New 
York committee, 53 ; on attitude ol 
country, 55 «., 57 > 85; on growing 
radicalism, 59, 86»., 87». 


697 

College of Philadelphia, charter con¬ 
troversy, 263-266, 277, 278, 295. 

Colleges, contest in Pennsylvania, 263- 
266, 277, 278, 295; Maryland, 314, 
316; colonial, 466, 466ft.; State 
movement, 469. 

Collins, John, as Governor, 209, 229, 
231; election to Congress, 227, 631; 
and ratification, 239. 

Collins, Thomas, President, 306. 

Colonies, governments and State gov¬ 
ernments, 1; types, 1; governments: 
Massachusetts, 2-4; Rhode Island 
and Connecticut, 4; Pennsylvania, 
6-9; Maryland, 9; Royal Provinces, 
9-11; sectionalism, n, 12; classes, 
12, 13; political organization, 13, 14; 
plans for trans-Appalachian, 665- 
667; bibliography, 682. See also 
Grievances; Transition. 

Columbia, S. C., origin, capital, 192, 
193, 202, 404. 

Commerce, Acts of Trade and Amer¬ 
ican Revolution, 24; States and 
confederate regulation, 282, 283, 343, 
388, 407, 556, 563, 601, 627, 642- 
644; Virginia port contest, 337, 342; 
Spanish negotiations and navigation 
of Mississippi, 345-348, 564-568, 
601, 670; size of foreign, 510; inter¬ 
colonial disputes, 547; interstate dis¬ 
cord, 555; interstate clearance fees, 
561; foreign restrictions, 563, 614; 
retaliation and interstate quarrels, 
564, 601; interstate impairment of 
obligation of contracts, 570; Balti¬ 
more and Pennsylvania paper 
money, 572; sectional, 573; State 
embargoes, 619, 620; continental 
embargoes, 620, 621; bibliography, 
690. See also Non-intercourse; 
Tariff. 

Committee of Fifty-one of New York, 
52-58; dissolved, 59. 

Committee of One hundred of New 
York, 86, 87«. 

Committee of Sixty of New York, 59; 
and Continental Congress, 86. 

Committees, local, and non-inter¬ 
course, 59, 64, 71; exercise of gov¬ 
ernmental powers, outrages, 65, 66; 
and military preparations, 74; of 
New York City, 86; regulation, 92, 

93 - ... 

Committees of correspondence, inter¬ 
colonial, 27, 32, 38; local, impor¬ 
tance, 31, 32; Philadelphia, 40ft.; 
Maryland, 41; Rhode Island, 46. 



INDEX 


698 

Committees (Councils) of Safety, 
Massachusetts, and military affairs, 
67-69; South Carolina, 73, 93; Con¬ 
necticut, 79; Rhode Island, 80; 
Pennsylvania, 83, 93, 101, 102, 253; 
Georgia, 84n., 85, 93, 109; New 
Hampshire, 90; New Jersey, 91, 
304; Maryland, 92; Virginia, 93; 
New York. 160; Delaware, 305. 

Commodities, State taxes in, 379, 381- 
383, 496 - 499 , S06, 514; requisition 
in, 473, 474, 478; payment of tax 
arrears, 529«., 537; foodstuffs for 
New England, 619. See also Sup¬ 
plies for army. 

Commutation of half pay, question in 
Connecticut, 210, 224; provision 

and contest, 634, 635. 

Comptrollers, creation, 514. 

Confederation. See Articles; Con¬ 
tinental Congress; Union. 

Confiscations. See Loyalists. 

Congregational Church, established in 
New England, 420-426; and estab¬ 
lishment elsewhere, 439. 

Connecticut, colonial government, 4, 
5; religion and establishment, 5, 
424-426; colonial prosperity, 5, 6; 
revolutionary sentiment and action, 
45, 46; military preparations, 70; 
war acts, 78, 79 5 Council of Safety, 
79; endurance of Charter, 164; 
judiciary, 167; suffrage and repre¬ 
sentation, 170; leaders, 209; and 
commutation of half pay, 210, 224, 
635; political unanimity, 222; 
Trumbull as Governor, opposition, 
222-225; later Governors, 225, 240; 
anti-federalists, 233, 240; ratifica¬ 
tion of Federal Constitution, 233, 
234, 240; Wyoming controversy, 
2 79, S83-S90; primogeniture, 443; 
and slave trade, 445, 446; negro 
company, 448; gradual emancipa¬ 
tion, 448; criminal code, 453; New¬ 
gate Prison, 462; education, 465, 
466; continental account, 477, 478; 
war-time paper and taxation, 482, 
489, 493; loyalist confiscations, 508; 
and postbellum taxation, 517; and 
postbellum paper money, 518, 533; 
and stay and tender laws, 534; pub¬ 
lic debt, 542; and New York tariff, 
560, 562; foreign trade and inter¬ 
state quarrels, 564; and Rhode 
Island paper money, 571; cession of 
Western claim, 596; and indepen¬ 
dence, 610 ; embargo, 619; and con¬ 


federate impost, 631, 638, 640; and 
confederate trade regulation, 643; 
bibliography: sources, 679; State 
histories, 681; transitional, 683; 
constitutional, 684; political, 685; 
slavery, 687; boundaries, 689. See 
also New England. 

Conservation, as element in transition, 
114, 206, 676, 677. 

Conservatives. See Politics. 

Constable, William, campaign of 1789, 
297. 

Constitutional conventions, not used, 
128, 129; beginning of use, 173, 175, 
178, 183, 184, 197, 200, 203. See 
also Federal Convention; State Con¬ 
stitutions. 

Constitutions. See Federal Constitu¬ 
tion ; State Constitutions. 

Contee, Benjamin, elected to Con¬ 
gress, 32 2M. 

Continental Congress, parties, 15; 
origin, 28, 38; appointments to, 35, 
40, 46, 57, 62, 85; Georgia’s tardi¬ 
ness, 48, 83-85; radical control, 58; 
non-intercourse, 59, 64; and as¬ 
sumption of government by prov¬ 
inces, 89, 125; and reconciliation, 
101; and Pennsylvania affairs, 106, 
156; and seizure of Quakers, 252; 
and economic distress, 259; and 
confiscations, 268; Gardoqui nego¬ 
tiations, effect on States, 345-348, 
564-568, 601, 670; paper-money 

plan and emissions, 470; qualified 
repudiation, 471, 472; domestic loan 
and lottery, 472; requisitions before 
1781, 472, 473; levies in kind, 473, 
474; Superintendent of Finance, 
474; requisitions after 1781, 476; 
State accounts, 477, 478; and State 
paper issues, 482 ; advises State taxa¬ 
tion, 492; and State loans, 505; and 
Shays’s Rebellion, 536; provincial¬ 
ism, decline and impotence, 551, 554, 
656-658; and fear in South, 576; 
and Vermont, 581-583, 595 ; and 
Wyoming, 585, 586, 588; Ordinance 
of 1787 as extra-legal, 596, 597; 
problems and burdens, 606; status 
of first, 606; position of second, 
607; initial military and civil meas¬ 
ures, 608, 609; and independence, 
609, 610; power and curbs, 610, 
620, 621, 623; early State protests, 
610; and keeping up army, 611- 
616; and military supplies, 616; and 
price-fixing, 617-619; and interstate 



INDEX 


foodstuff relief, 619; and embargoes, 
620; on remissness of States, 627; 
executive departments, 630; com¬ 
mutation of half pay, 634, 635; ap¬ 
peal for supplementary fund, 637, 
641; and enforcement of treaty, 
646, 652, 656; State infringements 
on power, 658-661; bibliography, 
690. See also Articles of Confed¬ 
eration; Union; Western claims. 

Contracts, interstate impairment of 
obligation, 570-572. 

Cooke, Nicholas, as Governor, 80, 209, 
225, 226. 

Cooper, Myles, attack on Whigs, 58. 

Cornell, Ezekiel, election to Congress, 
227, 631. 

Cornwallis, Earl of, Virginia cam¬ 
paign, 332; in North Carolina, 379, 
380. 

Coulter, John, and ratification, 319; in 
election of 1788, 321. 

Council, in Royal Provinces, 10. See 
also Executive; Legislature. 

Council Extraordinary of North Caro¬ 
lina, 381, 382. 

Council of Appointments of New 
York, origin, 162. 

Council of Censors, in Pennsylvania, 
origin, 151; purpose, 152; and de¬ 
claring acts void, 169; efforts to 
amend Constitution, 186-189; and 
violations of Constitution, 189-191; 
and Wyoming, 279, 588; of Ver¬ 
mont, 675. 

Council of Revision of New York, 
origin, 163, 168; and anti-loyalist 
bill, 273; and tariff, 282; and tax 
on profiteers, 502M. 

Council of Safety. See Committees 
of Safety. 

Counterfeiting, 569. 

Cowpens, battle, 380. 

Coxe, Tench, abolition society, 448ft.; 
and prison reform, 459; on growth 
of manufactures, 573. 

Crane, Stephen, Provincial Conven¬ 
tion, 45. 

Crime. See Punishment. 

Croghan, George, Illinois scheme, 666. 

Cruger, John, as loyalist, in Assembly, 
character, 50, 51; committee of 
correspondence, 52. 

Cumberland compact, 674. 

Cunningham, William, brutality, 255. 

Cushing, Caleb, Essex Result, i 77 - 

Cushing, Thomas, Junto, 13; inter¬ 
colonial committee of correspon¬ 


699 

dence, 32; and Quakers, 100; and 
framing Constitution, 177; Bow- 
doin contest, 215-217. 

Cuthbert, S. J., Executive Council, 
412. 

Cutler, Manasseh, Ohio Company, 
670. 

Dalton, Tristram, senatorial contest, 
242ft. 

Danielson, Timothy, and religious es¬ 
tablishment, 422. 

Dartmouth College, during war, 466ft. 

Davie, William, ability, 358; on Board 
of War, 379; and defense, 381; on 
impressment, 381ft, 506; on exhaus¬ 
tion of resources, 382; federalist, 
406; Federal Convention, 406; and 
ratification, 410. 

Davis, Orondates, Board of War, 379. 

Dawson, Thomas, Caucus Club, 13. 

Dayton, Elias, candidacy, 304. 

Deane, Silas, and Ticonderoga, 79; on 
Wyoming, 585^.; on confederate 
impost, 639 m. 

Debts. See British Debts; Impris¬ 
onment for debt; Public debts; 
Stay and tender. 

Declaration of Rights, Virginia, 146, 
432 . . . 

De Lancey, James, as loyalist, in As¬ 
sembly, 49, Si; confiscation, 444. 

Delaware, conservatism, 9, 305; Pro¬ 
vincial Convention, 46; framing 
Constitution, 113, 129, 135, 138, 139; 
judiciary, 167; and constitutional¬ 
ity, 169; suffrage and representa¬ 
tion, 170; constitutional revision, 
204; Council of Safety, 305; war¬ 
time administration, 306; and loy¬ 
alists, 306, 650; ratification of Fed¬ 
eral Constitution, 307; primogeni¬ 
ture, 443; and slave trade, 445; 
criminal code, 453; education, 468; 
continental account, 478; and post- 
bellum paper money, 518, 529; war¬ 
time paper money, 529; no tariff, 
559; and Pennsylvania tariff, 562; 
and confederate trade regulation, 
601, 644; and independence, 609; 
and confederate impost, 631, 640; 
bibliography: sources, 680; State 
histories, 681; constitutional, 684. 

Democracy, colonial New England, 2; 
and frontier, n, 674. 

Dexter, Samuel, Junto, 13. 

Dickinson, John, conservative, 15, 98; 
and agitation, 25; and Provincial 




7 oo 


INDEX 


Congress, 40, 40W.; war committee, 
83; Committee of Safety, 83, 101; 
and struggle over Assembly, 99-104, 
106, 107; and Adams, 101, 55571.; 
and reconciliation and independence, 
101, 104, 105, 107; dropped, 136; 
and suffrage, 140; and Constitution, 
154-156; retires, 185; bitterness, 
249; and loyalists, 275; return, 275; 
in Council, 276; election as Presi¬ 
dent of Pennsylvania, 276; Admin¬ 
istration, 276, 278; and troops, 279; 
and Wyoming, 279; federalist, 293; 
President of Delaware, 306; mili¬ 
tary ambitions, 324; and paper 
money, 519, 521, 529. 

Dickinson, Philemon, candidacy, 304. 

Dobbs, Arthur, on Starkey, 14; on 
attitude of colonists, 42; and relig¬ 
ious establishment, 437. 

Dooly, John, Executive Council, 412. 

Drayton, Jonathan, on Council of 
Safety, no. 

Drayton, W. H., and war prepara¬ 
tions, 73; and framing Constitution, 
134; and revising Constitution, 173; 
radical leader, 371. 

Duane, James, Committee of 51, 54; 
Whig, 56; Continental Congress, 57; 
Provincial Congress, 86; and Com¬ 
mittee of 100, 87; and framing 
Constitution, 135, 160; and Rutgers 
vs. Waddington, 272; and confeder¬ 
ate impost, 284, 285; campaign of 
1789, 299; judge, 302; and educa¬ 
tion, 468, and strengthening Con¬ 
federation, 628, 630, 638. 

Duche, John, proscribed, 254. 

Duer, William, as leader, 246; on 
Pennsylvania strife, 2507*.; and 
New York tariff, 282; and Jay’s 
candidacy, 286; campaign of 1789, 
297, 299. 

Dukinfield, Sir Ned, courtship, 360. 

Dulany, Daniel, fee controversy, 22. 

Dunmore, Lord, and Burgesses, 27, 28; 
on impotency, 71; powder affair, 
76; flight, 77; Norfolk affair, 108, 
hi; land speculations and Indian 
war, 666; on Watauga, 667. 

Dunmore’s War, 666. 

Dwight, Timothy, on Newgate Prison, 

463. 

East Florida, and Georgia, 47. 

Ebert, Samuel, Governor, 418. 

Economic conditions, colonial Connec¬ 
ticut, 6; and Massachusetts post- 


bellum politics, 214, 217; and New 
Hampshire politics, 221; and Rhode 
Island politics, 226; prosperity and 
politics, 257; Pennsylvania and high 
prices, 259, 260; Virginia and relief, 
336, 342; North Carolina relief 
measures, 386; debtor relief in 
South Carolina, 390, 404; post- 
bellum, 515-518, 525, 527 , 529 , 533 , 
534, 539; returning prosperity, 541- 
543. See also Commerce; Debts; 
Finances; Prices; Speculation. 

Eden, Sir Robert, fee controversy, 22; 
as Governor, 41; impotency, 81; 
position, departure, 92, 94, 610; and 
established church, 430. 

Edenton, conservative center, 359, 360. 

Education, colonial conditions, 3, 465, 
466; effect of war, 466; political 
basis, government support, 467; 
Constitutions and, 468; lack of 
legislation, 468; bibliography, 688. 

Electoral college in Maryland, 157. 

Ellery, William, displaced, 227, 636; 
and confederate impost, 641. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, and ratification, 
234; and slave trade, 451; on New 
York tariff, 560; on small States 
and union, 598; and strengthening 
Confederation, 629; in Congress, 
657 - 

Elmer, Theophilus, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 137. 

Embargoes, State, 619, 620; continen¬ 
tal, 620; enforcement, 621. 

Entail, abolition, 325, 326, 441; Gar¬ 
diner’s Island, 44471. 

Episcopal Church, in Connecticut, 
424-426; in Maryland, 430; and 
privilege in Virginia, 432-436; in 
North Carolina, 438; in South Caro¬ 
lina, 439, 440. See also Church of 
England. 

Erie triangle, 591. 

Essex Junto, Result, 177, 178, 211; 
faction, 212. 

Established church. See Religion. 

Eutaw Springs, battle, 377. 

Excise, chaotic, 514. 

Executive, position of colonial Gov¬ 
ernors, 3, 4, 6-10; local committees, 
59, 64-66, 71, 74, 86, 92, 93; flight 
of royal Governors, 75, 77, 78, 87, 
93 - 95 ; Massachusetts, 89, 182; New 
Hampshire, 90, 184; North Caro¬ 
lina, 91, 141, 142; Georgia, 109, 203; 
question in framing Constitutions, 
subordination, 139, 166, 207, 678; 



INDEX 


701 


Virginia, 147, 148; Pennsylvania, 
151, 152, 154, 198-200; New York, 
161, 162; South Carolina, 174, 202; 
war powers, 207, 328, 373, 374, 382, 
411, 412; departments of Congress, 
630; of Western governments, 675. 
See also Committees of Safety. 

Exeter, N. H., mob, 221. 

Export duties, 559. See also Em¬ 
bargoes; Non-intercourse. 

Extradition, Virginia measure for for¬ 
eign, 343, 344- 

Fanning, David, captures Burke, 383; 
as partisan, 385. 

Federal Constitution, precedents, 118; 
and State Constitutions, 172, 196, 
200, movement for revising conven¬ 
tion, 300, 353. See also Federal 
Convention; Ratification. 

Federal Convention, Rhode Island 
and, 231, 233, 237; New York and, 
289, 290; Maryland and, 318; Vir¬ 
ginia and, 349; South Carolina dele¬ 
gates, 405; North Carolina delegates, 
406; Georgia delegates, 419; slave 
trade question, 450; origin, 572; 
coercion or direct operation in, 662; 
bibliography, 690. 

“Federalist,” 291. 

Fees, Maryland controversy, 22. 

Fenner, Arthur, candidacy, 239. 

Few, William, conservative leader, 
411; Federal Convention, 419. 

Finances, colonial Pennsylvania, 7; 
Morris as Superintendent, 474; 
problem and confusion of State, 
478; State conditions and experi¬ 
ments, 479; sectional conferences, 
482, 617-619; revenue from loyalist 
confiscations, 507-509; State super¬ 
intendents, 514, SiS; South Caro¬ 
lina postbellum prostration, 525; 
bibliography, 688, 689. See also 
Economic conditions; Lottery; 
Paper money; Public debts; Taxa¬ 
tion. 

Findley, William, anti-federalist, 196, 
293; Constitutional Convention, 
197, 198; as leader, 275; and trans¬ 
fer of capital, 292; and ratification, 
294; and treaty obligations, 653. 

Fitzsimmons, Thomas, and confederate 
impost, 633. 

Ford, Timothy, on debtor relief, 4°5 ; 
on South Carolina finances, 525 »- 

Foreign attachment, controversy in 
North Carolina, 17. 


Foreign relations, and union, 599-601; 
State diplomacy, 659; bibliography, 
690. 

Forrest, Uriah, candidacy for Senate, 
322. 

Fort Wilson Riot, 261, 262. 

Foushee, William, and ratification, 
35 i. 

France, State loans, 506, 507; and 
United States trade, 563. 

Franklin, Benjamin, on proprietary 
government, 6; on Pennsylvania 
Governor and Assembly, 8; on 
Thomas Penn, 9; and Paxton boys, 
12; Committe of Safety, 83; and 
military commutation, ioin.; and 
overturn of Assembly, 102, 107; and 
independence, 103; and framing 
Constitution, 134, 149-152; and re¬ 
vision of Constitution, 198; in 
State service, 207; as President, 
281; and Test Act, 292; and bank, 
292; on primogeniture, 443, aboli¬ 
tion society, 448M.; and paper 
• money, 470, 471; on loans, 472«.; 
on taxation, 493».; and free trade, 
557; and Wyoming, 584; plan for 
confederation, 623; and equal vote 
in Congress, 625; and loyalist treaty 
rights, 646; Illinois scheme, 666. 

Franklin, John, and Wyoming, 589. 

Franklin, William, as Governor, 44; 
and war preparations, 82; arrest, 
94, 113; Illinois scheme, 666. 

Franklin, State of, 668, 669. 

Frazer, Persifor, on Yankees, 548«. 

Freedom of the press, Pennsylvania, 
199 - , • , 

French and Indian War, intercolonial 
disputes, 547. 

Frontier, colonial political aspect, n, 
12; obstruction as grievance, 24; 
and transition, 114; and indepen¬ 
dence, 11S; Virginia, and issues, 342 ; 
and Virginia extradition, 343, 344 ; 
and free navigation of the Missis¬ 
sippi, 345-34 8 > 566, 567 > 670; and 
ratification, 349, 35©; and specie, 
498 m.; eastern trade, 573 5 and 
union, 597, 598; line (1760-90), 
664; proclamation of 1763, 665; at¬ 
tempted colonies, 666; effect of 
Dunmore’s War, 666; Revoluton 
and government, attempted States, 
668; Spanish intrigue, 670; State 
land offices and sales, 671, 672; 
bounty land, 672; settlement im¬ 
pulse, 673; effect on national policy, 



702 


INDEX 


673; democracy, 674; strong ad¬ 
ministration, 675; bibliography, 
690, 691. See also Kentucky; 

Northwest; Tennessee; Western 
claims. 

Frontier posts, retention, 600, 651, 
654". 

Gadsden, Christopher, radical leader, 
character, 15, 370, 371; and non¬ 
importation, 64; and independence, 
126; and framing Constitution, 134; 
and revising Constitution, 173, 
i74«.; shelved by conservatives, 
372; and Charleston extremists, 372, 
402; captured, 375; in Legislature, 
390; declines Governorship, 390; 
and loyalists, 391. 

Gage, Thomas, on strong measures, 
34; Governor, and House, 35; im- 
potency, 36, 37; military measures, 
66 . 

Gale, George, candidacy for Senate, 
322; elected to Congress, 322».; 
and paper money, 530. 

Gallatin, Albert, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 197, 199; on new Consti¬ 
tution, 2oon.; anti-federalist, 294; 
and civil code, 455n. 

Galloway, Joseph, conservative, 40W.; 
and struggle over Assembly, 100; 
proscribed, 254; on provincialism, 
545; and confederation, 623; Illinois 
scheme, 666. 

Gardiner’s Island, entail, 444W. 

Gardoqui, Diego, Jay negotiations, 
345 - 348 , 565 - 568 . 

Garnish, 458. 

Gates, Horatio, Camden, 379; com¬ 
mand question, 550W. 

Georgia, colonial government, n; 
colonial politics, 14; tardiness in 
revolutionary action, 48, 49, 61, 83, 
84; radical action, 84; Council of 
Safety, 85, 93, 100; temporary gov¬ 
ernment, 109; early fighting, 109; 
and independence, hi ; framing Con¬ 
stitution, 128, 130, 135, 136, i39n.; 
and separation of powers, 165; suf¬ 
frage and representation, 170, 203; 
qualifications for office, 170; revi¬ 
sion of Constitution, issues, 195, 
200, 203, 204; war power of execu¬ 
tive, 207; lack of poise, 308; British 
control, 410, 412; party strife, lead¬ 
ers, 411; straits of patriot govern¬ 
ment, 412, 414; rival Whig govern¬ 
ments, 412-414; partisan warfare, 


414; military restoration, 415; civil 
restoration, distress and recupera¬ 
tion, 415, 416; measures on loyal¬ 
ists and apostates, revenue, 416, 417, 
509; sectional issues, counties, 417; 
capitals, 418; successive Governors, 
418; nationalism, 418; ratification 
of Federal Constitution, 419; relig¬ 
ious conditions, 440; entail and 
primogeniture, 442; and slavery, 
449; and slave trade, 451; criminal 
code, 452; education, 465, 468, 469; 
continental account, 478; inequit¬ 
able taxes, 504; postbellum paper 
money, 524; public debt, 542; ex¬ 
port duties, 559; and South Caro¬ 
lina tariff, 563; South Carolina 
boundary, 590; and confederate 
trade regulation, 601, 644; instruc¬ 
tions to delegates, 607; and con¬ 
trol of Indian affairs, 625, 658, 659; 
and confederate impost, 631, 632, 
638, 642; and British debts, 649; 
land office and sales, 671; bounty 
land and certificates, 672; bibliog¬ 
raphy: sources, 680; State histories, 
682; colonial, 682; political, 686, 
687; boundaries, 689. See also 
Savannah. 

Germain, Lord George, on Massa¬ 
chusetts, 34. 

Germans, attitude in Pennsylvania, 9. 

Gerry, Elbridge, as State leader, 208; 
Adams faction, 212; on Hancock’s 
resignation, 215n.; Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 234; on federalist ascendancy, 
241; and slave trade, 451; on tariff 
revenue, 511; on disjunctive spirit, 
546; and apportionment of requi¬ 
sition, 577; and strengthening Con¬ 
federation, 661. 

Gillon, Alexander, radical, 140; and 
turmoil, 395; career and character, 
398; and Charleston democratic ex¬ 
tremists, 398-403; and capital, 404. 

Gilman, Nathaniel, Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 236. 

Gilpin, Thomas, banished, 253. 

Glascock, William, forged letter, 413. 

Goddard, William, mobbed, 3ion. 

Golden Hill, battle, 52. 

Goldsborough, Robert, and indepen¬ 
dence, 313; and loyalists, 650. 

Goose Pond Tract, 418. 

Gorham, Nathaniel, Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 234; and ratification, 235; on 
religious establishment, 422n. 

Governors. See Executive. 




INDEX 


703 


Gray, George, on Test Act, 276. 

Graydon, Alexander, on Pennsylvania 
Constitution, 150; on Franklin’s 
straddle, 281; on Schuyler, 550; on 
Yankees, 550. 

Grayson, William, on Constitution¬ 
alists, 278W.; on free navigation of 
the Mississippi, 348; and ratification, 
352; Henry’s lieutenant, 353; Sen¬ 
ator, 354. 

Great Britain, trade restrictions, 563, 
614. See also American Revolution; 
British army; Peace of 1783; Recon¬ 
ciliation. 

Green, Jacob, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 137. 

Greene, Christopher, negro regiment, 
448 . 

Greene, Nathanael, militia laws, 70; 
command, 80; on Rhode Island and 
impost, 227, 228; and Pennsylvania 
strife, 258; on Willie Jones, 361> 
restores South Carolina, 377, 389; 
in North Carolina, and Board of 
War, 380; and Burke, 384; and loy¬ 
alists, 391; occupation of Charles¬ 
ton, 394; interference in South 
Carolina, 396; in Georgia, 415; on 
Congress and army, 616«.; on atti¬ 
tude of South Carolina, 639. 

Greene, William, as Governor, 209, 
226; defeated, 229. 

Grievances, general and local, 16, 23- 
25, 38; of North Carolina, 17, 18; 
of South Carolina, 18-20; judicial, 
20; ecclesiastical, 20-22; quartering 
troops, 23; land, 23; obstruction of 
frontier expansion, 24; chief causes 
of Revolution, 24, 25. 

Griffin, Cyrus, Wyoming commissioner, 
586. 

Griswold, Matthew, as State leader, 
209; as Trumbull’s successor, 225. 

Guerard, Benjamin, and Constitution, 
192; as Governor, 397; and demo¬ 
cratic mob, 399-401; and finances, 

Gwinett, Button, career, McIntosh 
duel, 411- 

Habersham, Joseph, conservative 
leader, 411; Executive Council, 4 12 - 

Hall, Lyman, Continental Congress, 
83; Governor, 416; and loyalists, 
417; and education, 469. 

Hamilton, Alexander and non-impor¬ 
tation, 56; on Maryland’s electoral 


college, 158; and Council of Ap¬ 
pointments, 16377.; and loyalist^, 
245, 268, 287, 65071.; leader, 246; 
on Clinton, 247, 249; Rutgers vs. 
Waddington, 270-272; pamphlet war 
with Clintonians, 272, 274; and 
commercial amendment of Confed¬ 
eration, 283; and impost amend¬ 
ment, speech, 284, 288, 633, 637; 
campaign of 1785, 284; and Jay’s 
candidacy, 286; candidacy for As¬ 
sembly, 287; and New York and 
Federal Convention, 289, 290; and 
ratification, 291; defeated for Con¬ 
tinental Congress, 296; campaign of 
1789, 297-301; influence as Cabinet 
officer, 302; and education, 468; on 
levies in kind, 474; and Morris, 474; 
on requisition payments, 477, 478; 
on State debts, 481; on New York 
taxation, 50277.; on provincialism, 
54677.; on State discord, 556; and 
basis of requisitions, 577; on re¬ 
missness of States, 577; on small 
States and union, 598; disunion 
bugaboo, 602; on New York and 
independence, 610; on control over 
army, 616 77.; and strengthening 
Confederation, 627 77., 630, 636; and 
funding, 634; and direct confederate 
taxation, 637; and enforcement of 
treaty, 652-654. 

Hampshire County Convention, 535. 

Hampton, Wade, in Legislature, 390; 
and capital, 404; and ratification, 
408. 

Hancock, John, Junto, 13; Provincial 
Congress, 37; Committee of Safety, 
69; in Constitutional Convention, 
179, 211; as State leader, 207; char¬ 
acter, 207, 243; in State service, 
207; faction, 210; first elections, 
regime, 212, 214; career, 212; in¬ 
auguration display, 213; resigns to 
avoid economic problem, 214; cam¬ 
paign and election (1787), 218-220; 
control, 220, 241, 243; and ratifi¬ 
cation, 235, 236; campaign (1789), 
Laco’s charges, 242, 243; and Castle 
sinecure, 24271.; and Adams, 243; 
military ambition, 324; and taxa¬ 
tion, 516. 

Handly, George, Governor, 418. 

Hanover, Va., as possible capital, 32777. 

Hanover Party, 581. 

Hanson, A. C., and ratification, 319- 

Harford, Henry, Proprietary, seques¬ 
tration, 444. 




704 


INDEX 


Haring, John, in Congress, 283; and 
Federal Convention, 290. 

Harnett, Cornelius, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 141; conservative leader, 
360; and loyalists, 365; and defense, 
366. 

Harrisburg, and capital, 292. 

Harrison, Benjamin, radical, 15; and 
military preparations, 72; and 
Speakership, 327; conservative 
leader, 335; Governor, 336; Henry’s 
lieutenant, 353. 

Harrison, Nathaniel, and treaty obli¬ 
gations, 653. 

Harrison, Richard, Federal Attorney, 
302. 

Hartford, financial convention, 619. 

Harvey, John, Provincial Convention, 
41, 42; and Martin, 77, 78; conser¬ 
vative leader, 359. 

Hawkins, Benjamin, Continental Con¬ 
gress, 388; Senator, 410. 

Hawley, Joseph, Junto, 13; and Mas¬ 
sachusetts Constitution, 181. 

Heath, William, command, 67; and 
ratification, 235. 

Heister, Daniel, candidacy for Con¬ 
gress, 295. 

Henderson, Richard, Transylvania, 
667, 674. 

Henderson, William, in Legislature, 390. 

Henry, John, Senator, 322. 

Henry, Patrick, radical, 15; and Par¬ 
son’s Cause, 21; and extra-legal 
agencies, 27; Continental Congress, 
62; and military preparations, 72, 
73; and Dunmore, 76; military am¬ 
bitions, command, 108, i09«., 324; 
and union, 118; Virginia Consti¬ 
tution, 124, 13s, 144, 145, 147; and 
conservatives, 145, and constitu¬ 
tional revision, 195; war powers 
and dictatorship, 207, 328; elections 
as Governor, 324, 328, 336; becomes 
conservative, 324; as House leader, 
334, 335 5 and Lee, 335; and debts, 
336; and religious tax, 337, 434, 
435; and British debts, 337; and 
extradition measure, 344; Indian 
plan, 344; and Confederation, 344; 
and free navigation of the Missis¬ 
sippi, 345, 347, 348; and ratification, 
349 - 353 ; an d Federal Convention, 
349; control, 353; and a new fed¬ 
eral convention, 353; and congres¬ 
sional elections, 354; retirement, 
357; and slavery, 449; and criminal 
code, 454; and taxation, 497; and 


foreign loan, 506; on New England, 
552; and free trade, 557; and mili¬ 
tary supplies, 616; and treaty obli¬ 
gations, 654, 655. 

Hervie, -, and Virginia ratifica¬ 

tion, 350. 

Hewes, Joseph, Continental Congress, 
62; conservative leader, 359; de¬ 
feated, 363. 

Heyward, Thomas, Jr., captured, 375; 
in Legislature, 390. 

Higginson, Stephen, Bowdoin faction, 
218, 219, 242; on Southern and 
Eastern coalition, 604. 

Plildreth, Richard, on State debts, 481. 

Hill, Whitmel, on British invasion, 

367. 

Hill, William, and ratification, 408. 

Hint Club, 526. 

Histories, bibliography of State, 681, 
682. 

Hobart, J. S., and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 159; and anti-loyalist bill, 
273 . 

Hogg, James, on Assembly, 386. 

Holland, State loan, 506, 507. 

Holt, John, attack on loyalists, 58. 

Holton, Samuel, and strengthening 
Confederation, 661. 

Hooper, William, Provincial Conven¬ 
tion, 41, 42; Continental Congress, 
62; as conservative, 131; and fram¬ 
ing Constitution, 141; on Governor, 
142; on Pennsylvania Constitution, 
153; ability, 358; career, 360; leaves 
Continental Congress, 363; on radi¬ 
cal measures, 365; in and on As¬ 
sembly, 378, 387; on defensive 

measures, 381; on State’s collapse, 
384; retires, 386; and treaty of 
peace, 389; and ratification, 408; 
and religious freedom, 438; on 
Yankees, 55i«..; on South Carolina, 
576 n. 

Hopkins, Stephen, as leader, 225. 

Hopkinson, Francis, Anti-Constitu¬ 
tionalist paper, 261; and College, 
264. 

Horse-thievery, punishment, 454, 454n. 

Houston, W. C., Wyoming commis¬ 
sioner, 586. 

Houstoun, John, agitation, 48; Gov¬ 
ernor, war powers, 412, 417, 418. 

Howard, J. E., Governor, 323; career, 
323; electoral college, 530; and 
paper money, 532. 

Howard, John, and prison reform, 
46 o ». 



INDEX 


70 S 


Howell, David, as State leader, 209; 
delegate, and confederate impost, 
227, 631-634, 641. 

Howley, Richard, radical government, 
413; Governor, 414. 

Hubbard, F. M., on provision tax, 
380 n. 

Huger, Benjamin, notes, 487. 

Huger, Daniel, parole, 375; in Legis¬ 
lature, 390; and confiscation, 392; 
congressman, 410. 

Humphreys, David, negro company, 
448. 

Huntington, Samuel, as State leader, 
209; and Trumbull, 223; as Gov¬ 
ernor, 225, 240; and ratification, 234. 

Husbands, Herman, Quaker, 437. 

Hutchinson, Thomas, character, 29; 
and Boston Massacre, 30; and sal¬ 
ary question, 31W., 331 on inter¬ 
colonial committee of correspon¬ 
dence, 32; on growing defiance of 
House, 33; on impotency, resigns, 
35; and slave trade, 445. 

Hutson, Richard, reelection as mayor, 
402. 

Illinois Company, 666 

Imperialism, and American Revolu¬ 
tion, 26, 38. 

Imposts. See Tariff. 

Impressment of sailors, Nicholson af¬ 
fair, 611. 

Impressment of supplies, by States, 
379, 381-383, 496 - 499 , 5 o 6 , 5*4 5 
continental levies, 474, 478 - 

Imprisonment for debt, conditions, 
relief measures, 456.} 

Independence, Samuel Adams and, 
33 n.; Pennsylvania attitude, 101- 
107; South Carolina and, no, 126; 
attitude elsewhere, m-113, 3 ° 5 > 
313; frontier and, 115; and union, 
155; Declaration and slave trade, 
445; development of measure, 609, 
610. 

Indians, States and agency, S 63«-5 
sporadic warfare, influence on union, 
599, 600; and foreign relations, 600, 
601; confederate control, 625, 658; 
Dunmore’s War, 666; Southern, and 
frontier settlements, 668. 

Innes, Harry, and ratification, 349. 

Internal improvements, movement, 
469. 

Interstate relations, causes of broils, 
555; trade disputes, tariffs,, 5 SS - 5^3 > 
and foreign-trade retaliations, 563, 


564; and free navigation of of the 
Mississippi, 564-568; monetary con¬ 
fusion, 568; impairment of obliga¬ 
tion of contracts, 570-572; growth 
of trade, 572-574; mutual com¬ 
plaints of remissness, 574; military 
remissness, 574-576; apportionment 
of requisitions, 576; mutual com¬ 
plaints of financial remissness, 577, 
578; and confederate amendment, 
578; and territorial quarrels, 578, 
592; Vermont controversy, 579-583; 
Wyoming Valley, 583-590; boun¬ 
dary disputes, 590, 591; and West¬ 
ern claims, 592-598; Eastern and 
Southern coalition, 604; jealousy, 
607; bibliography, 689, 690. See 
also Union. 

Iredell, James, as conservative, 131; 
on declaring acts void, 170H.; abil¬ 
ity, 358; career, 359; courtship, 
360; on radical control, 363; court 
act and judgeship, 364, 364^; at¬ 
torney-general, 3647*.; on Legisla¬ 
ture, 378; and loyalists, 385; retires, 
386; and treaty of peace, 387; and 
ratification, 408, 409. 

Irvine, William, on neglect of troops, 
267. 

Island money, 489, 490. 

Izard, Ralph, Senator, 410. 

Jackson, James, and Governorship, 
418. 

James River, improvement, 340, 341. 

Jarvis, Charles, senatorial candidacy, 
242M. 

Jauncey, James, in Assembly, 51; on 
Whig triumph, 88. 

Jay, James, Confiscation Act, 268. 

Jay, John, conservative, 15; Com¬ 
mittee of 51, 54 ; Whig, 56, 60; and 
Continental Congress, 57; Provin¬ 
cial Congress, 86; and Committee 
of 100, 87; and independence, 112; 
and loyalists, 112, 269, 274, 649; 
and framing Constitution, 135, 159- 
164; and British success, 158; char¬ 
acter, 159; and property represen¬ 
tation, 164; and Governorship, 247, 
286; on Franklin’s election, 281; 
and Federal Convention, 290; and 
ratification, 291; campaign of 1789, 
297, 299; influence, 302; Gar- 

doqui negotiations, 345 - 348 , 565- 

568, 601; and slavery, 449, 449"-5 
and education, 467, 468; on boun¬ 
dary disputes, 590; on State assim- 



INDEX 


706 

ilation, 605; and treaty violations, 
649, 651. 

Jefferson, Thomas, on ease of transi¬ 
tion, 1, 125; declaration on taking 
up arms, 15; and extra-legal agen¬ 
cies, 27; resolutions (1774), 62; and 
military preparations, 73; and 
North’s offer, 76; and Locke, 121; 
Virginia Constitution, 124, 144; on 
reform, 144; on legislative domina¬ 
tion, 167; and constitutionality, 
170 n.; on Constitutions, 171; on 
idealization of “fathers,” 172; and 
constitutional revision, 193, 194; 
in State service 206; war powers, 
207; and Luther Martin, 313; as 
progressive leader, program, 324, 
325, 3341 redrafting legal code, 327, 
453, 454 5 and moving capital, 327; 
and aristocracy, 327, 441; as Gov¬ 
ernor, loss of leadership, 328, 329, 
333, 334; and British invasion, 329- 
333; inquiry into conduct, 333; 
and confederate impost, 336; on 
British debts, 337; influence of 
“Notes”, 339; and Randolph, 340; 
and Potomac improvement, 341; 
on Madison and Mason, 357; and 
ratification, 409; and religious free¬ 
dom, 433, 434, 436; and entail, 
441; and primogeniture, 442; and 
slave trade, 445, 446; and slavery, 
449; influence of Beccaria, 455; 
and prison reforms, 462; and edu¬ 
cation, 467, 468; on State debts, 
478, 481; on taxation, 494; on 
State broils, 555; and free trade, 
557 5 and federal monetary unit, 
568; on monetary confusion, 570; 
Northwestern Ordinance, 596; plan 
for confederation, 622. 

Jenifer, Daniel of St. Thomas, and 
State Senate, 309; Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 318; and State loan, 505; on 
loyalist confiscations, 509n. 

Johnson, James (or Zachariah John¬ 
ston), and ratification, 350. 

Johnson, Joseph, on war impoverish¬ 
ment, 394. 

Johnson, Reverdy, on Luther, Mar¬ 
tin, 314. 

Johnson, Thomas, fee controversy, 
22; Continental Congress, 62; war 
powers, 207; Governor, 309:; ca¬ 
reer, 312; and independence, 313; 
and ratification, 319; on tax ar¬ 
rears, 5i3«-; and paper money, 
530, 532. 


Johnson, Sir William, Illinois scheme, 

666 . 

Johnston, Hannah, courtship, 360. 

Johnston, Samuel, Provincial Con¬ 
vention, 41; Provincial Congress, 
91; on constitution-making, 130; 
and suffrage, 131, 140; and fram¬ 
ing Constitution, 141; ability, 358; 
career and character, 359; on radi¬ 
cal control, 363; Continental Con¬ 
gress, 378; on provision tax, 379; 
candidacy for Governor, 382, 385; 
and treaty of peace, 386, 389; 
State Senator, 387, 410; Governor, 
406; and ratification, 408, 410; and 
religious freedom, 438; on tax col¬ 
lection, 513. 

Johnston, Zachariah. See Johnson, 
James. 

Jones, Allen, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 141; conservative leader, 361; 
Speaker, 36471.; in Assembly, 387; 
and ratification, 408; on South 
Carolina, 576/1. 

Jones, (?) Gabriel, and Virginia rati¬ 
fication, 350. 

Jones, N. W., political power, 14; 
agitation, 48. 

Jones, Thomas, of New York, on 
Scott, 55. 

Jones, Thomas, of North Carolina, 
and religious establishment, 142; 
conservative leader, 359; and in¬ 
tolerance, 438. 

Jones, Willie, Provincial Convention, 
41; and framing Constitution, 138; 
as radical leader, 140, 361; control 
of House, 364, 364//.; and loyalists, 
365; and Federal Convention, 406; 
and ratification, 408-410. 

Judd, William, and Wyoming Valley, 

589. 

Judiciary colonial, and grievances, 3- 
5* i7». 20, 31, 32; Maryland, 92; 
Georgia, 93, 109; question in fram¬ 
ing Constitutions, 139, 166; North 
Carolina, 142, 364; New York, 
161; and power to declare acts 
void, 168-170; New Hampshire, 
184; South Carolina, 202; Pennsyl¬ 
vania, 263. 

Junto, in Massachusetts, 13, 212. 

Kaimes, Lord, on colonies and union, 
553- 

Kalm, Peter, on disjunctive spirit, 
545- 

Kempe, J. T., confiscation, 444. 




INDEX 


707 


Kent, James, on Hamilton’s impost 
speech, 288, 653. 

Kenton, Simon, Indian fighter, 600. 

Kentucky, Transylvania, 667, 674; 
Virginia county, 667; statehood 
movement, 669, 670; Spanish in¬ 
trigue, 670; sectionalism, 673; bili- 
ography, 690, 691. 

King, Rufus, Federal Convention, 
234; and ratification, 235; and 
federalism, 290; Senator, 302; and 
Spanish negotiations, 566, 568; on 
remissness of States, 577; on dis¬ 
union, 603; and confederate im¬ 
post, 641; on impotence of Con¬ 
gress, 657; and strengthening Con¬ 
federation, 661. 

King’s Mountain, battle, 380. 

Kinloch, Francis, Continental Con¬ 
gress, 377- 

“Know Ye” men, 540. 

Knox, Henry, on ratification parties, 
235; on disjunctive spirit, 546; on 
Rhode Island paper money, 571; 
on disunion, 602. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, in Virginia, 
332 . 

Lamb, John, character, 54, 55 ; and 
outbreak of war, 86; in Assembly, 
273; collector, 282, and ratifica¬ 
tion, 291. 

Land, proprietary, in colonial Penn¬ 
sylvania, 7, 8; New York manors, 
12, 444; plantation aristocracy, 12, 
13; greed of Governors, 23; aboli¬ 
tion of entail, 325, 326, 441; Geor¬ 
gia speculation, 418; dispersion of 
large holdings, 444; inequitable 
tax, 500; North Carolina tax, 502; 
State sales, 509, 671-; bounty, 672. 

Langdon, John, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 134; as State leader, 208; 
campaigns, 220-222, 236, 237; ca¬ 
reer and character, 221; President, 
221; and ratification, 236. 

Langdon, Woodbury, Provincial Con¬ 
gress, 39- _ 0 , 

Lansing, John, in Congress, 283; and 
impost amendment, 285; Federal 
Convention, 290; campaign of 
1789, 299; and imprisonment for 
debt, 456. 

Latrobe, B. H., prison plan, 462. 

Laurens, Henry, and war prepara¬ 
tions, 73; Provincial Congress, 81, 
82; and test oath, 97; Council of 
Safety, no; and independence, 


126; and framing Constitution, 
134; career and character, 370; 
and new Constitution, 371; retires, 
405; on financial prostration, 525, 
526; negro clause in treaty, 647. 

Laurens, John, on oligarchy, 174W.; 
on Prevost negotiations, 374; cap¬ 
tured, 375; in Legislature, 3.90; 
and negro soldiers, 448; and slav¬ 
ery, 449«. 

Lawrence, John, in Congress, 283, 
301. 

Lawson, Robert, and ratification, 350. 

Lawyers, power, in colonial New 
York, 12, 14; radical denunciation, 
535 - 

Lear, Tobias, on Henry’s control, 
353 , 355 - 

Ledyard, Isaac, attack on Hamilton, 
274 - 

Lee, Arthur, on confederate impost, 
639 - 

Lee, Charles, on Sears, 55; and 
Reed, 258. 

Lee, F. L., and military supplies, 616. 

Lee, Henry, and ratification, 349; 
and Henry’s control, 353; in South 
Carolina, 377; occupation of 
Charleston, 394; captures Augusta, 
415; horse seizures, 611; and 
treaty obligations, 653. 

Lee, R. H., and extra-legal agencies, 
27, 28; Continental Congress, 62; 
and military preparations, 73; on 
separation of powers, 121; Vir¬ 
ginia Constitution, 122, 124, 125, 
144, 147; and constitutional re¬ 
vision, 195; on Quakers, 252*1.; 
redrafting legal code, 327; as con¬ 
servative leader, 334, 335; and 
Henry, 335; and confederate im¬ 
post, 336, 633, 639, 641; and Brit¬ 
ish debts, 337; and Randolph, 340; 
and free navigation of the Missis¬ 
sippi, 348, 348**.; and ratification, 
350; Senator, 354; and religious 
taxation, 434**.; and slavery, 449; 
on depreciated currency, 488; and 
taxation, 517; and New England, 
552, 605; on disunion, 602; and 
treaty obligations, 654. 

Lee, T. L., and framing Constitution, 
135, 145; conservative, 146; and 
code, 453- 

Lee, T. S., Governor, 312; electoral 
college, 530. 

Lee, William, and foreign loan, 506; 
and treaty obligations, 653. 





708 


INDEX 


Legal codes, reform, 326, 453 - 455 - 

Legislature, colonial, 3, 4, 6-10; ex¬ 
tra-legal agencies, 26-60, 86, 87; 
New York loyalist, 52, 85; power 
under early Constitutions, 90, 140, 
142, 148, 151, 152, 154, 161, 166- 
170, 173, 176, 182, 184, 192-195, 

198, 199, 203, 204, 263».; passing 
of old Assemblies, 97, 99-108; 

Maryland electoral college, 157. 
See also Provincial Congresses and 
Conventions; Representation; and 
States by name. 

Lemaire, James, and foreign loan, 
506. 

Leslie, Alexander, on South Caro¬ 
lina confiscations, 393; evacuation 
of Charleston, 393. 

Lewis, Andrew, Dunmore’s War, 667. 

Lewis, William, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 197-199. 

Lexington and Concord, news, effect, 
74 , 78 - 87 . 

Lincoln, Benjamin, and ratification, 
235; and Lieutenant-Governorship, 
242, 243; on North Carolina 

troops, 367; and Prevost, 373; 
Charleston siege, 374; before Sa¬ 
vannah, 413; and comptrollership, 
515; disbelief in union, 597, 603. 

Lincoln, Levi, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179; and slavery, 448. 

Livermore, Samuel, campaign, 221. 

Livingston, Gilbert, campaign of 
1789, 299. 

Livingston, H. B., on paper money, 
522. 

Livingston, Peter, character, 56; and 
non-importation, 57. 

Livingston, Philip, Whig, in Assem¬ 
bly, 50; character, 56; Continental 
Congress, 57; Provincial Congress, 
86, 86n. 

Livingston, R. R., Provincial Con¬ 
gress, 86; and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 135, 159, 160, 162; character, 
159, 164; on New York parties 
(1783), 272; and Governorship, 

286; and Federal Convention, 290; 
and ratification, 291; campaign of 
1789, 297, 299; and strengthening 
Confederation, 629. 

Livingston, Samuel, on tax collec¬ 
tion, 513. 

Livingston, Walter, in Congress, 283. 

Livingston, William, Provincial Con¬ 
vention, 45; and Zenger trial, 54; 
Continental Congress, 62; as Gov¬ 


ernor, career and character, 207, 
302, 303; during war, 303; militia 
measure, 304; Council of Safety, 
304; British reward, 304; war es¬ 
says, 304; reelections, 304; and for¬ 
eign service, 305; and Federal Con¬ 
stitution, 305; on loyalist confisca¬ 
tions, 508; and interstate monetary 
exchange, 569; and paper money, 
570 . 

Loans. See Public debt. 

Local government, colonial South 
Carolina, n, 19. 

Locke, John, on rights and char¬ 
ters, 117; influence on Constitu¬ 
tions, 119. 

Logan, Benjamin, Indian fighter, 600. 

Lottery, continental, 472. 

Love, (?) John, lynched, 647. 

Low, Isaac, Committee of 51, 53, 54; 
Continental Congress, 57; Com¬ 
mittee of 60, 59; in Provincial 
Congress, 86; Committee of 100, 
87 . 

Lowndes, Rawlins, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 134; and revising Con¬ 
stitution, 173, 174; in State service, 
207; Governor, conservative, 372; 
accepts British conquest, 375; and 
confiscations, 392; losses, 394; and 
ratification, 407; and religious es¬ 
tablishment, 439. 

Loyalists, control in New York, 
character and belief, 49-51; pam¬ 
phlets, 58; early outrages on, 66; 
and transition of government, 97; 
test-oaths, 97; Moore’s Creek, 
109; treatment in New York, 112, 
268-274, 287, 288, 508, 509, 649; 
measures against, in Pennsylva¬ 
nia, 250-256, 267 n., 276-278, 292, 

508, 650; in Delaware, 306, 650; 
rising in Maryland, 310; Maryland 
measures on, 310, 311, 315-317, 508, 

509, 509«., 650; Virginia and, 336, 
508, 648; North Carolina measures 
against, 365, 384-389, 5o8, 50 gn., 
647, 648; measures in South Caro¬ 
lina, 390-400, 404, 508, 647, 648; 
Georgia measures, 416, 417, 509; 
dispersion of landed estates, 444; 
imprisonment, 463, 464; confisca¬ 
tions, methods, graft, 507; period 
of confiscations, 508; revenue from 
confiscations, 508; inducements to, 
594; attempt to enforce treaty 
rights, 645-651; in New Jersey, 
650; results, 678. 



INDEX 


709 


Lutheran Church, and establishment, 
433 - 

Lyman, Phineas, Mississippi scheme, 

666 . 

Lynch, Thomas, Sr., notes, 487. 
Lynch, Thomas, Jr., and apportion¬ 
ment, 625; and control over Indi¬ 
ans, 626. 

Maclaine, Archibald, conservative 
leader, 360; and court act, 364; 
and judgeship, 364n.; in Legisla¬ 
ture, 378, 587; and Caswell, 386; 
and treaty of peace, 389; and rati¬ 
fication, 408; and paper money, 
523 - 

Maclay, William, Senator, diary, 295. 
McCook, John, Administration, 306. 
McDougall, Alexander, and Assembly, 
23; character, 54, 55 5 and non¬ 
importation, 55, 5b; and Conti¬ 
nental Congress, 57 5 Provincial 
Congress, 86. 

McHenry, James, and ratification, 
318, 319; career, 318; in election of 

1788, 321. . , , 

McIntosh, Lachlan, Gwmett duel, 
411; radical enmity, 413. 

McKean, Thomas, radical, 103; Pro¬ 
vincial conference, 107; and inde¬ 
pendence, 113; Delaware Constitu¬ 
tion, 13S, 138; and Pennsylvania 
Constitution, 154, 197; and loyal¬ 
ists, 255; Pennsylvania office, 256; 
on attitude of Dalaware, 305; re¬ 
called, 305. 

McKinley, John, President, captured, 
3 ° 5 - 

McMechen, David, on colleges, 

opposition, 317; and ratification 
of Constitution, 319, 321; in elec¬ 
tion of 1788, 321. 

Macon, Nathaniel, on Caswell, 362. 
McSparran, James, on Rhode Island, 

539. 

Madison, James, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 135,. i4S, ! 47 ; on legisla¬ 
tive domination, 167, 169; and 

constitutional revision, 194; in 
State service, 207; on Massachu¬ 
setts and ratification, 235; on 
Rhode Island and ratification, 
237; as progressive leader, 325, 
326, 334; and debts, 336; and 
British debts, 337 5 and ports, 337 , 
562; and religious freedom, 338, 
432-436; and Potomac improve¬ 
ment, 341; on economic distress, 


342; and sectionalism, 342; extra¬ 
dition measure, 344; and free 
navigation of the Mississippi, 347, 
568; and Virginia alignment on 
ratification, 349, 351; in Ratifica¬ 
tion Convention, 351, 352; and 
Henry’s control, 353; and Senate, 
354; election to House, 355, 35b; 
and Mason, 357; federal amend¬ 
ment on religion, 441; and slavery, 
449; and criminal code, 454; and 
education, 467; on tax in kind, 
498; and taxation, 512, 516; on 
postbellum paper money, 518, 523, 
528, 528M.; on confederacies, 552; 
on impairing obligation of con¬ 
tracts, 570, 572; on neglect of 
requisitions, 574; on small States 
and Western claims, 593; on New 
York and sectional interests, 595 *, 
and strengthening Confederation, 
628, 636; and confederate impost, 
b32, b33, 637, 638; and Howell, 
634; and funding, 634; and trade 
amendment, 642, 643ft.; and treaty 
obligation's, 653; on violation of 
Articles of Confederation, 658; on 
direct operation in Federal Consti¬ 
tution, 662; on loyalty to State, 
678. 

Malbone, John, candidacy, 231, 232. 
Malcolm, William, and impost 
amendment, 284; in Assembly, 
287; and Clinton, 287. 

Mandamus Councillors, 34. 

Manigault, Gabriel, apostasy, 375 - 
Manors, in New York, 12; abolition 
of privilege, 444. 

Manufactures, encouragement, 70, 731 
development, 573 ; Western trade, 

Marchant, Henry, and ratification, 

2 38 . . _ . 

Marine Anti-Britanmc Society, 400. 
Marion, Francis, partisan warfare, 
376; uplander, 377; under Greene, 
377; in Legislature, 390; and loyal¬ 
ists, 391* 

Marshall, John, as conservative 
leader, 335; and sectionalism, 342; 
and ratification, 349 , 35 i, 352 ; and 
Henry’s control, 353; and religious 
taxation, 434M.; on Articles of Con¬ 
federation, 624; and treaty obliga¬ 
tions, b54. 

Martin, Alexander, as moderate, 362; 
Board of War, 379; Council Ex¬ 
traordinary, 381; Governor, 384, 



7io 


INDEX 


386; and loyalists, 384; Federal 
Convention, 406. 

Martin, John, Governor, 415, 416. 

Martin, Joseph, and ratification, 408; 
Indian fighter, 600; and State of 
Franklin, 669. 

Martin, Josiah, and grievances, 17, 
18; and agitation, 41; impotency 
and flight, 77, 78; and Watauga, 
667. 

Martin, Luther, career and character, 
313; and ratification, 318; and 
slave trade, 450; and paper money, 
533 - 

Maryland, colonial government, 9; 
ecclesiastical and fee grievances, 21; 
war action, and Eden, Provincial 
Convention, 40, 41, 61, 73, 81, 610; 
delegates to Congress, instructions, 
62, 607; non-intercourse, 63, 65; 
systematization of government, 92; 
suffrage and representation, 95, 
133> i57, 170, 204; loyalist legisla¬ 
tion, Test Act, confiscations, relief, 
revenue, 97, 310, 311, 315-317, 5°8, 
509, 509/1., 650; and independence, 
113, 3i3, 609, 610; framing Con¬ 
stitution, 130, 133, 134, 138, 139, 
157; electoral college, 157; qualifi¬ 
cations for office, 158, 170; endur¬ 
ance of Constitution, 164; and ex¬ 
ecutive, 166; judiciary, 167; de¬ 
mand for constitutional revision, 
204; war power of executive, 207; 
poise, 308; intercameral disputes, 
308-312, 317; legislators and office¬ 
holding, 309; pay of legislators, 
309; loyalist rising, 310; Bank of 
England stock, 311, 5o6n.; Gov¬ 
ernors, 312, 323; Chase as leader, 
312; Martin Luther, 313; colleges, 

314, 316; and Potomac Company, 

315, 316; tariff, 315, 316, 511, 557, 
559; demagogic appeals, 316; and 
moving capital, 317; and confeder¬ 
ate impost, 317, 631, 638, 642; 
postbellum paper-money struggle, 
317, 518, 529-533; and Annapolis 
Convention, 317; and Federal Con¬ 
vention, 317; ratification contest, 
318-320, 533; party strife, election 
of 1788, 320-322; senatorial elec¬ 
tion, 322; colonial religious estab¬ 
lishment, 429; State government 
and religion, 430, 431; entail and 
primogeniture, 443; sequestration 
of Proprietary, 444; and slave 
trade, 446; emancipation move¬ 


ment, 449; criminal code, 455; and 
stay and tender, 457, 532; prisons, 
464; education, 468, 469; conti¬ 
nental account, 477, 478; war-time 
paper and taxation, 485, 486, 490, 
495, 496; tax in kind, 498, 499; 
salaries in kind, 499; domestic 
loan, 505; forced loan, 505; for¬ 
eign loan, 506; tax arrears, 512, 
513M.; public debt, 542; and Penn¬ 
sylvania paper money, 572; Po¬ 
tomac trade regulations, 572; and 
Western claims, 592-594; and Con¬ 
gress, 610; Nicholson’s impress¬ 
ments, 611; Lee’s horse seizures, 
611; foodstuffs for New England, 
619; and confederate trade regula¬ 
tion, 643; and British debts, 651; 
and treaty obligations, 655«.; bib¬ 
liography: sources, 680; State his¬ 
tories, 682; colonial, 682; transi¬ 
tional, 683; constitutional, 684; po¬ 
litical, 686, 687; slavery, 687; 

financial, 689; boundaries, 689. 
See also Baltimore. 

Mason, George, and non-importa¬ 
tion, 27; and framing Constitution, 
135, 136, 145, 147; character, 136; 
Declaration of Rights, 146; and 
constitutional revision, 194; as pro¬ 
gressive leader, 325, 326, 334; re¬ 
drafting legal code, 327, 453; and 
State tariff, 342; and sectionalism, 
343; and Western claims, 343; 
Federal Convention, 349; and rati¬ 
fication, 350, 352, 353; and Madi¬ 
son, 357; and religious freedom, 
432-434; and slave trade, 450; on 
taxation, 492; and paper money, 
528«.; on confederate impost, 639; 
on British debts, 647; and treaty 
obligations, 654, 655. 

Mason, Thomson, and constitutional 
revision, 194; on taxation, 503. 

Massachusetts, as colony, equality, 2; 
education, 3, 465, 466, 468; colonial 
government, 3; revolutionary pre¬ 
liminaries, 4; colonial politics, 13; 
House and extra-legal agencies, 
Provincial Congress, 29, 32, 35-38, 
61; Boston town meeting and agi¬ 
tation, 29-31; committees of corre¬ 
spondence, 31, 32; House and sal¬ 
ary question, 32-34; coercive acts, 
34; local conventions, 36; military 
and industrial preparations, 66- 
70; resumption of old charter, 
88; suffrage and representation, 



INDEX 


89, 182; and separation of 

powers, 165; judiciary, 167; and 
declaring acts void, 169; demand 
for constitutional convention, and 
popular vote, 173, 175, 178, 179; 
Constitution framed by House, re¬ 
jection, 176, 177, an; conservative 
constitutional plan, Essex Result, 
177, 178, 211; Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179; framing and adoption 
of Constitution, 179-181; character 
of Constitution, 181, 182; leaders, 
207, 208, 243, 444; factions, 210- 
212; Hancock’s successes, reasons, 
212-214; Hancock avoids economic 
problem, 214, 215; Bowdoin’s cam¬ 
paign and election (1785), 215; 
Bowdoin and Shays’s Rebellion, 
217; Bowdoin-Hancock campaign 
(1787), 218-220; ratification con¬ 
test, 234-236; federalist ascendancy, 
241; Hancock’s continued control, 
241, 243; contest for Lieutenant- 
Governor, 242; campaign of 1789, 
242; senatorial contest, 242 n.; Cas¬ 
tle sinecure, 242/1.; religion and es¬ 
tablishment, 421-423; primogeni¬ 
ture, 443; and slave trade, 445; 
and slavery, emancipation, 447,448; 
criminal code, 455; imprisonment 
for debt, 456, 457; prisons, 463; 
continental account, 477, 478; war¬ 
time paper and taxation, 483, 484, 
489, 492; tax in kind, 498; do¬ 
mestic loan, 504; land sales, 509; 
tariff, 511, 558; tax arrears, 512; 
comptroller, 515; and postbellum 
taxation, 516, 51 7 , 536, 537 ; post- 
bellum financial condition, 534, 
537; stay and tender bill, 534; and 
postbellum paper money, 535, 537; 
radical convention and demands 
(1786), 535; anti-court mobs, 536; 
suppression of Shays’s Rebellion, 
536; reasons and results of Rebel¬ 
lion, 536; public debt, 542, 543; 
boundaries, 547; foreign trade re¬ 
taliation, interstate quarrels, 564; 
and Rhode Island paper money, 
571; and apportionment of requisi¬ 
tions, 577; and Vermont, 582; 
claim in New York, 591; cession 
of Western claim, 596; and inde¬ 
pendence, 609; instructions to dele¬ 
gates, 610; food shortage, relief, 
619; embargo, 620; and confederate 
impost, 631, 638, 640; and com¬ 
mutation of half pay, 635; and 


7 it 

confederate supplementary fund, 
641; and confederate trade regu¬ 
lation, 643; and loyalist rights, 651; 
and British debts, 651; and treaty 
obligations, 655//.; and strengthen¬ 
ing of Confederation, 661; bibliog¬ 
raphy: sources, 679; State histories, 
681; transitional, 683; constitu¬ 
tional, 684; political, 685; slavery, 
687; financial, 689; ratification, 690. 
See also Boston; New England. 

Mathews, George, Governor, char¬ 
acter, 418. 

Mathews, John, Governor, 390; and 
confiscations, 393; occupation of 
Charleston, 394; on sacrifice of 
South, 575; army committee, 6i6n.; 
and strengthening Confederation, 
628. 

Matlack, Timothy, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 150, 151, 154; radical, 
185; reply to Anti-Constitutionalist 
paper, 260. 

Mazzei, Philip, and State loans, 507. 

Mecklenburg Resolves, 91. 

Mercer, J. F., Federal Convention, 
318; and ratification, 320; defeated 
for Congress, 322; on confederate 
impost, 639. 

Methodist Church, and establishment, 
422, 426, 433, 434. 

Middle States, financial conference, 

617. 

Middleton, Arthur, and war prep¬ 
arations, 73 ; and Governorship, 
372; captured, apostasy, 375; in 
Legislature, 390. 

Middleton, Henry, accepts British 
conquest, 375; and confiscations, 
392; notes, 487. # 

Mifflin, Thomas, and Provincial Con¬ 
gress, 39; attitude, 99, 103, 107, 
185; in Assembly, 100, 102, 257, 
260; in Constitutional Convention, 
198, 199; on new Constitution, 
2oow.; in State service, 207; Fort 
Wilson Riot, 261, 262; and State 
paper money, 266, 489; and loyal¬ 
ists, 275; President, 295. 

Militia, New Jersey measure, 304; 
in Revolution, 611-615. 

Mississippi Company, 666. 

Mississippi River, free navigation 
question, 345-348, 564-568, 601, 

670; bibliography, 689. 

Molesworth, James, executed, 255. 

Money, lack of standard, 481; inter- 
| state confusion, 568; counterfeiting 



712 


INDEX 


and debasement, 569. See also 
Paper money. 

Monroe, James, and sectionalism, 
343; and free navigation of the 
Mississippi, 346, 347, 566, 567; and 
ratification, 352; Henry’s lieuten¬ 
ant, 3S3; candidacy for House, 355 , 
356; Senator, 357; on confederate 
trade regulation, 601; and treaty 
obligations, 654. 

Montagu, Lord Charles G., as Gov¬ 
ernor, 19, 23. 

Montesquieu, Baron de, influence on 
Constitutions, 119; and union, 553. 

Montgomery, Joseph, and requisitions, 
476 ». 

Montgomery, Richard, on Lamb, 55. 

Moore, William, Administration, 275. 

Moore’s Creek, battle, 109. 

Morris, Gouverneur, growing Whig- 
ism, 58, 60; and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 135, 159, 162, 164; and 
ballot, i6om.; on Clinton and pa¬ 
tronage, 297, 300; and emancipa¬ 
tion, 449«., 451; and paper money, 
470 - 

Morris, Lewis, and anti-loyalist bill, 
273; on Connecticut, 548. 

Morris, Richard, and candidacy, 297, 
298. 

Morris, Robert, conservative, 15, 99, 
103, 107, 185; and independence, 
101, 107; in Assembly, 102, 257, 
260; and Pennsylvania Constitu¬ 
tion, 155; and bank controversy, 
191, 280; and price-reducers, 260, 
261; and College, 264; and State 
paper money, 266, 489; and loyal¬ 
ists, 275; and Test Act, 292; fed¬ 
eralist, 293 ; Senator, 295; superin¬ 
tendent of Finance, 474; and requi¬ 
sitions, 475-477, 517; on lack of 
monetary standard, 481; and poll 
tax, 502M.; State loan, 505. 

Morris, Roger, confiscation, 444. 

Motte, Isaac, Continental Congress, 
377 - 

Moultrie, William, on Prevost nego¬ 
tiations, 374; captured, 375; in 
Legislature, 390; and British pro¬ 
tection, 382; on confiscations, 393 ; 
occupation of Charleston, 394; on 
war losses, 395; Governor, 403 ; and 
loyalists, 404. 

Mowry, Daniel, delegate, and confed¬ 
erate impost, displaced, 227, 631. 

Muhlenberg, F. A., Council of Cen¬ 
sors, 186, 187, 189, 191. 


Muhlenberg, Peter, Vice President, 
281; candidacy for Congress, 295. 

Nash, Abner, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 138; moderate, 362; on har¬ 
mony, 363M.; Speaker, 364; Gov¬ 
ernor, and defense, Board of War, 
368, 378-382; and loyalists, 387. 

Nashville, settlement of region, 669, 
674 - 

Negroes. See Slaves. 

Nelson, Thomas, and Governorship, 
324 - 

Nelson, Thomas (nephew), and Brit¬ 
ish invasion, 329; Governor, resigns, 
336; and ratification, 350; and seiz¬ 
ure of supplies, 512. 

New England, religious establishment 
in, 420; financial conventions, 482, 
617-619; prejudice against, 548- 
552, 578; and Virginia, 552; manu¬ 
factures and Western trade, 573; 
foodstuffs for, 619. See also States 
by name. 

New Hampshire, colonial government, 
10; colonial politics, 13; Went¬ 
worth’s land grab, 23; revolution¬ 
ary agitation, Provincial Congress, 
38, 39, 62; representation and suf¬ 
frage, 62, 75, 132, 184; delegates to 
Continental Congress, 62; military 
preparations, 70; flight of Gover¬ 
nor, 75; Constitutions, framing, 
89-91, 126, 129, 132, 134, 139; ef¬ 
forts to revise Constitution, 182, 
183; character of revision, 184; 
leaders, 208, 220; political cam¬ 
paigns, 220-222, 236, 237; ratifica¬ 
tion of Federal Constitution, 236, 
237, 440; religion and establish¬ 
ment, 424; primogeniture, 443; 
and slave trade, 446; emancipation, 
448; prisons, 463; education, 465, 
466, 468; continental account, 477, 
478; war-time paper and taxation, 
483, 484; tax in kind, 498; loyalist 
confiscations, 508, 509M, 651; tax 
arrears, 512; tax collection, 513; 
comptroller, 514M.; postbellum 
financial conditions, stay and ten¬ 
der, 537; and postbellum paper 
money, 538, 539; rioting, 539; pub¬ 
lic debt, 542; foreign-trade retalia¬ 
tion, 564; and financial remissness, 
577; Vermont controversy, 580- 
582; instruction to delegates, 607; 
embargo, 620; and confederate im¬ 
post, 631, 638; and confederate sup- 




INDEX 


7 i 3 


plementary fund, 641; and confed¬ 
erate trade regulation, 643, 644; 
bibliography: sources, 679, 680; 

State histories, 681; colonial, 682; 
constitutional, 684; political, 685. 
See also New England. 

New Haven, financial convention, 618. 

New Jersey, colonial government, 10, 
44; Provincial Conventions, 44, 45, 
61; delegates to Continental Con¬ 
gress, 62; military preparations, 74, 
82; preliminary sketch of govern¬ 
ment, 91; arrest of Gov. Franklin, 
94; suffrage, 95; and independence, 
112, 609, 610; Constitution, 113, 
127, 129, 137, 164; and constitu¬ 
tionality, 169, 170; qualifications 
for office, 170; demand for con¬ 
stitutional revision, 204; Livingston 
as Governor, 207, 302-305; during 
war, 303; military measures, 304; 
Committee of Safety, 304; ratifi¬ 
cation of Federal Constitution, 305; 
first federal election, 305; religious 
conditions, 420, 427; primogeniture, 
443; and slave trade, 445, 447 5 
gradual emancipation, 448; horse- 
thievery, 454«-; prisons, 464; edu¬ 
cation, 465, 468; continental ac¬ 
count, 478; war-time paper money, 
491; and loyalists, corruption of 
confiscations, 5°8, 594, 650; tax 
collection, 513; postbellum paper 
money, 522, 570; public debt, 542; 
and Schuyler, 550M.; n0 tariff) 5595 
free ports, 560; and New York 
tariff and clearance fees, 561; and 
confederate impost, 561; and West¬ 
ern claims, 595; and confederate 
trade regulation, 627, 642; and con¬ 
federate supplementary fund, 641; 
bibliography: sources, 680; State 
histories, 681; colonial, 682; polit¬ 
ical, 686; slavery, 687; punishment, 
688. 

New York, colonial government, 9, 
10; colonial classes, 12; colonial 
politics, 14; and quartering, 20, 52; 
judicial controversy, 20; loyalist 
control and Assembly, 49 - 52 ) 85; 
population (I77 1 )) 49 5 standing 01 
Whigs, leaders, 50, 54 - 56 , 245-247; 
and non-importation (1772), 5 1 5 
and British troops, 51 5 committee 
of correspondence, 52; Sons of 
Liberty, 54 5 Committee of 51 and 
non-importation, 5 2 - 54 , 5 6 , 64, 87 ; 
and Continental Congress, 57 5 atti¬ 


tude of country regions, 57; grow¬ 
ing Whiggism, 58; Committee of 
60, 59, Provincial Congresses, 86, 
87; growing radicalism, 86m.; re¬ 
turn and flight of Gov. Tryon, 87; 
measures against loyalists, Trespass 
Act, persecution, 97, 112, 268-274, 
287, 288, 508, 509, 649; and inde¬ 
pendence, 112, 609, 610; framing 
Constitution, 128, 129, 132, 135, 
136, 158; suffrage and representa¬ 
tion, 132, 162, 164, 170; Commit¬ 
tee of Safety, 160; character of 
Constitution, 161, 162, 167; Coun¬ 
cil of Appointments, 162; Council 
of Revision, 163, 168; endurance 
of Constitution, 164; judiciary, 167; 
Pennsylvania parallelism, 245; Clin¬ 
ton’s first election, 247, 248; Clin¬ 
ton and war duties, 248; and con¬ 
federate trade regulation, 282, 283, 
643; tariff and tonnage acts, inter¬ 
state disputes, 282, 510, 511, 558, 
560; and confederate impost, 283- 
289, 477, 578, 631, 638, 642; and 
Annapolis Convention, 284, 289; 
election of 1786, 286, 287; and 
Federal Convention, 28-9; ratifica¬ 
tion of Federal Constitution, 290, 
291, 440; federal conversion of par¬ 
ties, first federal election, 295, 301; 
and first electoral college, 296; 
campaign of 1789, Clinton’s near 
defeat, 296-301; federalist influ¬ 
ence, 302; colonial religious condi¬ 
tions, 420, 426; State government 
and religion, 427; primogeniture, 
443; abolition of manorial privileges, 
444; dispersion of large 1/and/ed 
holdings, 444 ; and slave trade, 446; 
slavery, 446, 44 8 , 449 5 criminal 
code, 453; imprisonment for debt, 
456; prisons, 464; education, 465, 
467-469; continental account, 477, 
478; war-time paper and taxa¬ 
tion, 485, 493, 495 , 5oi; tax in 
kind, 498; landed interests and 
taxation, 500; tax levies, 501; prof¬ 
iteer tax, 502M.; public lands, 509; 
and tax arrears, 512, 5 i 3 »*; and 
superintendent of finances, 515; and 
postbellum taxation, 517; post- 
bellum paper-money contest, 527; 
public debt, 542, 543 5 and the re¬ 
missness of other States, 574 , 5771 
Vermont controversy, 579 - 583 ; 
Pennsylvania boundary, 591; Mas¬ 
sachusetts claim in, 591; cession of 






7 M 


INDEX 


Western claim, 593; and sectional 
interests, 595; financial conference, 
617, 619; embargo, 619, 6i9«.; and 
treaty obligations, 652-655; and 
control over Indian affairs, 659; 
bibliography: sources, 679, 680; 

State histories, 681; colonial, 682; 
transitional, 683; constitutional, 
684; political, 685, 686; slavery, 
687; financial, 689; boundaries, 689. 

New York City, population, 49; and 
Lexington, 86; Committee of 100, 
86; after evacuation, 270; radical 
control, 273; churches, 426; pris¬ 
ons, 464; Chamber of Commerce 
and paper money, 527; as inter¬ 
state port, 556. 

Newburgh Address, 635. 

Newcastle, Del., free port, 562. 

Newgate Prison, 462. 

Newport, British occupation, eco¬ 
nomic result, 226, 539; charter re¬ 
voked, 232. 

Newspapers, bibliography, 685, 686. 

Nicholas, George, charges against 
Jefferson, 334; and ratification, 349, 
3So, 352; and Henry’s control, 353; 
and religious freedom, 435, 436; 
and treaty obligations, 655. 

Nicholas, R. C., and military prep¬ 
arations, 72; and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 135, 145; as conservative 
leader, 326; and Speakership, 327; 
and religious establishment, 433. 

Nicholas, W. C., and religious free¬ 
dom, 435. 

Nicholson, James, impressment af¬ 
fair, 611. 

Nicholson, John, Comptroller, 514. 

Non-importation. See Non-inter¬ 
course. 

Non-intercourse, Virginia associations, 
27, 28, 29n.; in New York, 51-53, 
55-57, 59, 87; as weapon, 63, 66; 
attitude and action (1774), 63; 
action of Continental Congress, 64; 
enforcement, 64, 71; Committees of 
Safety, 64; Georgia and, 83-85. 

Norfolk, Dunmore affair, 108, hi; 
port question, 337, 342. 

Norris, Isaac, and Wyoming, 584. 

North, Lord Frederick, and reconcil¬ 
iation, 66, 75, 76, 80, 83. 

North Carolina, colonial government 
and representation, 10, n; colonial 
sectionalism, Regulators, 12; colo¬ 
nial politics, 14; grievances, 17, 18; 
revolutionary action, Provincial 


Convention, 41, 42, 61; delegates 
to Continental Congress, 62; non¬ 
intercourse, 63, 65; military prep¬ 
arations, 74; Assembly and Con¬ 
vention, flight of Governor, 77, 78; 
committee system of government, 
91; suffrage, 95, 170; Moore’s 
Creek, 109; and independence, 111; 
framing Constitution, 111, 124, 

130, 131, 134, 138, 139; character 
of Constitution, 141, 142, 364; en¬ 
durance of Constitution, 164; qual¬ 
ifications for office, 170; demand 
for constitutional revision, 204; lack 
of poise, 308; political contrast 
with South Carolina, 358, 368; con¬ 
servative leaders and centers, 359- 
361, 406; radical leaders, 361; sec¬ 
tionalism, and land tax, 361, 502; 
Caswell as Governor, 362, 364; 
clash over congressional delegates, 
363; and ratification of Federal 
Constitution, 364, 406, 408, 440; 
inadequate war measures, 364, 
366; embargo on exports, 364; 
conservative officials, 364/*.; loyal¬ 
ist confiscations, 365, 384-389, 508, 
509»., 647, 648; war-time finan¬ 
cial legislation, 365; war-time 
paper money, 365, 367, 378, 486, 
491; inadequacy pending British 
invasion, 366-368; British inva¬ 
sion, measures for defense, 378- 
384; Board of War, 379-381; pro¬ 
vision tax and impressment, 379, 
381-383, 506; Council Extraordi¬ 
nary, 381, 382; Burke as Governor, 
382; restoration of Governor’s war 
power, 382; exhaustion, 382-384; 
elections of Martin, 384, 386; debt¬ 
or relief, 386; postbellum Legis¬ 
lature, 386; and treaty of peace, 
386-389; and confederate impost 
and trade regulation, 387, 388, 631, 
638, 644; neglects requisitions and 
Congress, 388; cessions of Western 
claim, 388, 595, 671; Johnston as 
Governor, 406; party transition to 
federal basis, 406; and Federal Con¬ 
vention, 406; first federal election, 
410; colonial religious conditions, 

436, 437; State religious conditions, 

437, 438; entail and primogeniture, 
442; and slave trade, 447; slavery, 
449 5 colonial criminal code, 452; 
education, 465, 468; continental ac¬ 
count, 477, 478; tax in kind, 496, 
499; domestic loan, 505; tariff, 511; 



INDEX 


tax arrears, 512; tax collection, 
513, 514; comptroller, 514H.; post- 
bellum paper money, 518, 523; 
public debt, S42; and neighbors’ 
tariffs, 562; and Indian agency, 
563W.; and impairment of obliga¬ 
tion of contracts, 57L 572; and 
financial remissness, 577; Virginia 
boundary, 591; instructions to dele¬ 
gates, 607; land office and sales, 
671, 672; bounty land, 672; bibli¬ 
ography: sources, 680; State his¬ 
tories, 681, 682; colonial, 682; 

transitional, 683; constitutional, 
684; political, 686, 687; slavery, 
687; religious, 688; financial, 689; 
boundaries, 689; ratification, 690. 
See also Tennessee. 

Northwest, Clark’s expedition, effect, 
659, 668; Northwestern Territory, 
596, 597, 670; Ohio Company, 670; 
and democracy, 674; bibliography, 
691. See also Frontier; Western 
claims. 

Ogden, Isaac, Provincial Convention, 
45. 

Ogden, Lewis, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 137. 

Ohio Company, 670. 

Oliver, Peter, and salary, 33. 

Ordinance of 1787, as extra-legal, 596, 
597; union significance, 597. 

Orne, Azor, senatorial candidacy, 
242M. 

Oswald, Eleazer, challenges Hamil¬ 
ton, 274. 

Otis, James, Junto, 13; committee of 
correspondence, 31; provincialism, 
545. 

Otis, S. A., Constitutional Convention, 
* 79 - 

Owen, Daniel, Deputy-Governor, 229, 
231; and Governorship, 239. 

Paca, William, fee controversy, 22; 
and framing Constitution, 135; 
Governor, 312; career, 312; and 
ratification, 319, 320; and paper 
money, 530 - 

Page, John, candidacy for Governor, 
324, 328; conservative leader, 326; 
and ratification, 350. 

Paine, R. T., and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 177, i79, 211; and religious 
establishment, 422. „ 

Paine, Thomas, “Common Sense, 
102; and struggle in Pennsylvania, 


715 

i04«., 105M., and Constitutions, 

123, 151; warning to radicals, 281; 
on taxation, 493; and State loan, 
505; and loyalist confiscations, 507; 
on paper money, 527. 

Paper money, first provincial issues, 
80-82, 85».; war-time, in Middle 
States, 91, 266, 484-486, 489-491; 
war-time, in South, 93, 136, 365, 
367 , 378, 390 , 486-488, 491; Massa¬ 
chusetts and postbellum, 217, 535; 
New Hampshire and postbellum, 
221, 538, 539; Rhode Island post- 
bellum contest, 228-233, 239, 539- 
541; Quakers and, 253n.; Penn¬ 
sylvania and refusers, 254; Mary¬ 
land postbellum contest, 317, 518, 
529-533; continental plan and 
emissions, 470; qualified repudia¬ 
tion of continental, 471, 472; colo¬ 
nial issues and methods, 479; con¬ 
ditions of State war-time issues, 
480-482; war-time, in New Eng¬ 
land, 482-484, 489; Congress on 
State, 482; depreciation, 488; war 
crisis issues, 489-492; and loan cer¬ 
tificates, 505; causes of postbellum 
agitation, 515; extent of agitation, 
518, 533; Pennsylvania postbellum, 
519-522; New Jersey postbellum, 
522; North Carolina postbellum, 
523; Georgia postbellum, 524; 
South Carolina postbellum, 525- 
527; New York postbellum, 527, 
528; postbellum agitation in Vir¬ 
ginia and Delaware, 528, 5 2 9 5 ef¬ 
fect of Shays’s Rebellion, 537; in¬ 
terstate exchange, 569, 57 °, 572; 
and impairment of obligation of 
contracts, 570-572; bibliography, 
688 . 

Parliament, policy of coercion, 66. 

Parsons, Theophilus, Essex Result, 
177, 178; Constitutional Conven¬ 
tion, 179; and Shays’s rebels, 218; 
and ratification, 235, 236. 

Parson’s Cause, 21. 

Parties. See Politics. 

Paxton boys, n. 

Peabody, Nathaniel, army committee, 

6i6«. 

Peace of 1783, North Carolina and, 
386-389; American duties under, 
644, 645, 651; loyalists rights, 645- 
651; British debts, 647-652; ne¬ 
groes, 647; frontier ports, 651, 
654W.; States and observance, 652- 
656; bibliography, 690. 






INDEX 


716 

Peale, C. W., and Pennsylvania Con¬ 
stitution, 186; in Assembly, 263. 

Peggy Stewart affair, 65. 

Pemberton, Isaac, and New Eng¬ 
land, 100. 

Pemberton, John, arrest, 252; ban¬ 
ished, 253. 

Pendleton, Edmund, conservative, 15, 
326; and military preparations, 72; 
Committee of Safety, 109; and 
framing Constitution, 135, 145; and 
entail and primogeniture, 326, 441, 
442; redrafting legal code, 327, 
453; and sectionalism, 342; and 
ratification, 349, 350, 352; and re¬ 
ligious establishment, 433. 

Penn, Gov. John, as Proprietary, 9; 
position, 94; attitude, 100; ban¬ 
ished, 253; and loss of Proprietary, 
263. 

Penn, John, of North Carolina, radi¬ 
cal leader, 361; election to Con¬ 
tinental Congress, 363; Johnston 
on, 363; Board of War, 379. 

Penn, Richard, and College, 264, 265. 

Penn, Thomas, as Proprietary, 7-9. 

Penn, William, and criminal law, 452; 
and Maryland, 547. 

Pennington, Edward, banished, 253. 

Pennsylvania, aspects of proprietary 
government, 6-9; conservatism, 9; 
colonial sectionalism, n; colonial 
classes, 12; revolutionary action, 
Provincial Convention, 39, 40, 

ioon., 104; and non-intercourse, 64; 
military preparations, 83; Commit¬ 
tee of Safety, 93, 101, 102; suf¬ 
frage and representation, 95, 96, 
104, 106, 132, 133, 170; struggle to 
retain Charter and Assembly, 99- 
108; and independence, 101-103, 
105-107, 609, 610; Quakers and 
war, ioiw., 102; convention to 
frame Constitution, 107, 129, 132, 
135; framing Constitution, 136, 
139, 143, 149-151; character of 
Constitution, 151-153; strife over 
Constitution, 153-156, 184-186, 197, 
249, 256, 257, 260; effects of strife, 
156; judiciary, 167; Council of 
Censors, 169; efforts of Censors to 
amend Constitution, 186-189; Cen¬ 
sors and violations of Constitu¬ 
tion, 189-191; other elements in 
constitutional struggle, 191; influ¬ 
ence of Federal Constitution, 196, 
197; second Constitution, its char¬ 
acter, 197-200, 295; war powers of 


executive, 207; New York paral¬ 
lelism, 245, Wharton’s Administra¬ 
tion, 250; measures against loyal¬ 
ists, Test Act, 250-256, 267n., 276- 
278, 292, 508, 650; Virginia Exiles, 
252, 253; emergent military meas¬ 
ures, Council of Safety, 253, 266; 
Roberts-Carlisle execution, 256; 
Reed’s Administration, 257, 258; 
discontent of troops, mutiny, 258, 
260, 266, 267, 278; and high prices, 
259, 260; political disorder, Fort 
Wilson Riot, 260-262; Bryan as 
leader of Legislature, 262, 263; 
gradual emancipation, 263, 448; 

sequestration of Proprietary, 263, 
444; Assembly and Council, 26311.; 
College charter controversy, 263- 
266, 277, 278, 295; war-time paper 
money, 266, 484, 489, 495; decline 
of Constitutionalists, 267, 275, 276; 
Dickinson’s minority Administra¬ 
tion, 276, 278; election of 1784, 
frauds, 278, 278Wyoming con¬ 
troversy, 279, 583-590; bank con¬ 
troversy, 280, 292; loan office, 

funding and land measures, 280; 
electoral reform, 280; reaction to 
radical measures (1785), 281; 

Franklin’s quieting Administration, 
281; transfer of capital, Harris¬ 
burg, 292; federal conversion of 
parties, 293; ratification of Federal 
Constitution, 293, 294, 440; first 
federal election, 294, 295; Quaker 
privilege and control, 420, 428, 429; 
religious freedom, 428; primogeni¬ 
ture, 443; and slave trade, 445, 446; 
criminal code, 452, 454; civil code, 
455».; imprisonment for debt, 456, 
457; prison conditions and reform, 
458-461; education, 465, 468, 469; 
continental account, 477, 478; colo¬ 
nial paper money, 479; island 
money, 489, 490; tax in kind, 499; 
domestic loan, 505; and foreign 
loan, 507; land office and sales, 
509, 671, 672; tariff, 510, 511, 559; 
tax arrears, 512; comptroller, 514; 
postbellum paper-money contest, 
519-522; assumption of continental 
debt, and funding, 519, 521; pub¬ 
lic debt, 542; paper money and 
Maryland trade, 572; Southern 
trade, 573; Virginia boundary, 591; 
New York boundary, Erie triangle, 
591; instructions to delegates, 606; 
and confederate impost, 631, 640; 




INDEX 


717 


and confederate trade regulation, 
643; Britisn debts, 650; character of 
transition, 677; bibliography: 
sources, 679; State histories, 681; 
colonial, 682, transitional, 683; 
constitutional, 684; political, 686; 
slavery, 687; boundaries, 689; rati¬ 
fication, 690. See also Philadelphia. 
Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 450. 
Person, Thomas, and suffrage, 131; 
and framing Constitution, 138; 
radical leader, 361; Johnston on, 
363; control of House, 364; and 
salaries, 365; and Continental Con¬ 
gress, 388; and confederate impost, 
388M.; anti-federalist, 407-409; de¬ 
feated for Senate, 410; and taxa¬ 
tion, 502. 

Perth Amboy, free port, 560. 
Philadelphia, Committee of Corre¬ 
spondence, 40«.; after evacuation, 
255; Fort Wilson Riot, 260-262; 
and imprisonment for debt, 457; 
prison conditions and reform, 458- 
461; as interstate port, 556, 562. 
Phillips, William, Virginia invasion, 
332 . 

Phillips Exeter Academy, influence, 
466M. 

Phips, Sir William, as Governor, 3. 
Pickens, Andrew, partisan warfare, 
376; uplander, 377; under Greene, 
377; in Legislature, 390. 

Pickering, John, as State leader, 208; 
candidacy, 241. 

Pickering, Timothy, Constitutional 
Convention, 197, 199» clipping 

money, 569; and Wyoming, 589. 
Pinckney, Charles [1], wa& prepara¬ 
tions, 73, 81; framing Constitution, 
134; and Lieutenant-Governorship, 
372; parole, 3751 and religious es¬ 
tablishment, 439. 

Pinckney, Charles [2], Federal Con¬ 
vention, 405; and primogeniture, 
443; and slave trade, 450, 45 i- 
Pinckney, Charles C., captured, 375 ; 
in Legislature, 390; Federal Con¬ 
vention, 405; and ratification, 407, 
408. 

Pinckney, Col. Thomas, and confisca¬ 
tion, 392. 

Pinckney, Thomas, Governor, career, 
405; and ratification, 408. 

Pine Barren Act, 405, S 2 5 » 57 1 *. 
Pinkney, William, and manumission, 
449. 

Pitkin, William, and Trumbull, 223. 


Plater, George, and ratification, 319; 
electoral college, 530; and paper 
money, 530, 532. 

Politics, colonial organization, 13, 14; 
parties in Congress, 15; and State 
Constitutions, 15; lack of party 
development, 210; federalization, 
2 93» 295, 406; bibliography, 685- 
687. See also States by name. 

Poll tax, inequitable burden, 500, 503, 
504; Morris on, 5o2n. 

Pomeroy, Seth, command, 67. 

Population, Massachusetts, 2; Con¬ 
necticut, 6; Pennsylvania, 9; New 
York, 49; South Carolina, 201; 
Georgia, 203; calculation (1783), 
47on.; (1760-90), frontier line, 664. 

Ports, question in Virginia, 337, 342; 
interstate, 556, 562; New Jersey 
and Delaware free ports, 560, 562. 
See also Commerce. 

Portsmouth, revolutionary agitation, 
39; attack on fort, 70. 

Potomac River, improvement, 315, 
316, 340, 341; trade and Annapolis 
Convention, 572. 

Potter, James, candidacy, 276. 

Pownall, Thomas, and coercion of 
Massachusetts, .34 n.; on paper 
money, 480. 

Preble, Jedidiah, command, 67. 

Presbyterian Church, and establish¬ 
ment, 423, 433, 434, 436, 437 - 

Prescott, James, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 177. 

Press, Revolution and freedom, 469. 

Prevost, Augustine, in South Caro¬ 
lina, Rutledge negotiations, 373, 
374; in Georgia, 412. 

Prices, attempted regulation, 617-619. 

Primogeniture, abolition, 202, 442. 

Prisons, conditions in Pennsylvania, 
reform movement, 457-461; soli¬ 
tary confinement, 461; Newgate, 
462; in New England, 463; else¬ 
where, 464. See also Punishment. 

Proclamation of 1763, 24; purpose, 

665. 

Property. See Land; Primogeniture; 
Taxation. 

Proprietary governments, aspects, 6- 
9; sequestration by States, 263, 444 - 

Providence, growth, 226; New Eng¬ 
land conference, 482, 617; as inter¬ 
state port, 556. 

Provincial Congresses and Conven¬ 
tions, origin, 29-41; character, 60; 
and appointments to Continental 






7 i8 


INDEX 


Congress, 62; and non-intercourse, 
63;, and local committees, 66; 
Massachusetts military and indus¬ 
trial measures, 67-70; Virginia 
military and industrial measures, 
71-73; Maryland military prepara¬ 
tions, 73, 81; Virginia Assembly 
and, 76; North Carolina Assembly 
and, 77; South Carolina military 
preparations, 81, 82; New Jersey 
and war preparations, 83; Georgia, 
83-85; origin and attitude of New 
York, 85-87; and temporary gov¬ 
ernments, 89-93, 109-113; and 

loyalists, 97; Pennsylvania, ioow., 
104; and framing Constitutions, 
126-132, 136, 137, 157, 158. See 
also Transition. 

Provincialism. See Interstate rela¬ 
tions. 

Provisions. See Commodities. 

Public debts, attempted continental 
domestic loan, 472; confusion of 
State, 478; amount of State, 481; 
State domestic loans, 504, 505; 

forced loans, 506; State foreign 
loans, 506, 507; Pennsylvania, as¬ 
sumption of continental, and fund¬ 
ing, 519, 521; postbellum State, 
519, 53m., 534, 539, 541; confed¬ 
erate funding, 634; confederate im¬ 
post and payment, 641. See also 
Paper money. 

Punishment, cruelty of British code, 
451; of colonial codes, 452, 453; 
reform in Virginia, 453, 454; and 
in Pennsylvania, 454, 455; atti¬ 
tude of other States, 455; cruelty 
of State codes, 456M.; bibliography, 
688. See also Imprisonment for 
debt; Prisons. 

Putnam, Israel, war costume, 45, 49; 
and Pomeroy, 67; at siege of Bos¬ 
ton, 68; goes to war, 74; on British 
regulars, 74. 

Putnam, Rufus, Ohio Company, 670. 

Quakers, attitude, 7, 9, 429; Penn¬ 
sylvania conservatives, neutrality 
and problem, 99, ioira., 102, 252, 
253W.; measures against, 252-254; 
Roberts-Carlisle execution, 256; 
their control of Pennsylvania, 420, 
428; in New England, 323, 324, 
and slavery, 446. 

Qualifications for office, question in 
framing Constitutions, 140; in 
North Carolina, 142, 170; in 


Maryland, 158, 170; undemocratic, 
170; in New Jersey, 170; in Geor¬ 
gia, 170, 203; in South Carolina, 
174, 201; in Massachusetts, 182; 
in New Hampshire, 184. See also 
Suffrage. 

Quartering troops, New York con¬ 
troversy, 23, 52; in South Carolina, 
23; act on Massachusetts, 34. 

Quebec Act, 24. 

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., on North Caro¬ 
lina, 360. 

Quit-rents, abolished, 444. 

Radicals. See Politics. 

Ramsay, David, on transition in 
South Carolina, g'jn.; captured, 375; 
in Legislature, 390; on paper 
money, 480; on taxation, 492, 494; 
on financial confusion, 5i5«. 

Randolph, Beverly, Governor, 340. 

Randolph, Edmund, on Madison, 135; 
and constitutional revision, 194; on 
issues (1784), 33 6; Governor, 339; 
career, 340; Annapolis Convention, 
349; Federal Convention, 349; and 
ratification, 350-352; and Henry’s 
control, 353; on religious contrasts, 
431W., and religious freedom, 436; 
on disunion, 602; and strengthen¬ 
ing Confederation, 629; on status 
of Congress, 660. 

Randolph Peyton, and extra-legal 
agencies, 27, 28; Whiggism, 77. 

Ratification, Connecticut, 233, 234, 
241; Massachusetts contest, 234- 
236; New Hampshire, 236, 237; 
Rhode Island, 238-240; Pennsyl¬ 
vania, 281, 293, 294; New York, 
290, 291; New Jersey, 305; Mary¬ 
land, 318-320, 533; alignment on, 
in Virginia, 348-351; Virginia con¬ 
vention, 351-353; North Carolina, 
364, 406, 408; South Carolina, 407; 
Georgia, 419; and religious free¬ 
dom, 440; influence of Shays’s Re¬ 
bellion, 537; advantage to States, 
662; bibliography, 690. 

Read, George, and independence, 113; 
and framing Constitution, 138; at¬ 
titude, 305; Administration, 306. 

Reconciliation, efforts, 66, 75, 76, 80, 
83, 101. 

Redley, Matthew, and foreign loan, 
506. 

Reed, Joseph, radical, 15, 99; and 
Provincial Congress, 39, 4on., ioom.; 
and representation, ic>4».; and 



INDEX 


719 


Charter, 106; and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 185; and revision of Consti¬ 
tution, 189; war powers, 207, 266; 
and loyalists, 255; President, Ad¬ 
ministration, 257, 258; character, 
257; and high prices, 259; and 
Fort Wilson Riot, 262; and 
mutiny, 266; on State paper money, 
267, 490; on incompetence of As¬ 
sembly, 267; on taxation, 494; on 
tax arrears, 514. 

Regulators’ Rebellion, 12. 

Religion and religious freedom, es¬ 
tablished church in Connecticut, 4, 
424-426; colonial grievances, 20-22; 
in North Carolina, 142, 436-438; 
in New York, i 64«., 426, 427; in 
South Carolina, 174, 192, 438- 

440; in New Hampshire, 184, 423; 
and establishment in Virginia, 326, 
327, 337-339, 431-436; desire for, 
420; colonial establishments, 420; 
in Massachusetts, 421-423; in New 
Jersey, 427; in Pennsylvania, 428; 
in Maryland, 429-431; in Georgia, 
440; federal amendm ent on free- 
dom, 440; intercolom^~lpreJudice, 
548; bibliography, 688. 

Representation, colonial, 4, 9, n; 
conservatism and advances, 61, 95, 
96; control in New Hampshire, 75, 
90, 132; South Carolina, 96, 133, 
174, 200; Pennsylvania, 104, 132; 
element in transition movement, 
114; in constitution-framing bod¬ 
ies, 132, 133; New York, 132; Vir¬ 
ginia, 133, 148, 193; Georgia, 195; 
Maryland, 204. 

Republican Society of Pennsylvania, 
26°. 

Requisitions, Virginia and (1784), 337 , 
338; North Carolina ignores, 388; 
before 1781, 472, 473; levies in 
kind, 473 , 474 , 478; Morris and at¬ 
tempted enforcement, 475, 47 6 ; 
later ones, 476; total receipts, 477 5 
ability to pay, payments by States, 
477, 478; remissness and interstate 
complaints, 574, 577, 578; disputes 
over apportionment, bases, 576, 624; 
appeal for supplementary funds, 

637, 641. . t J 

Revenue. See Finance; Land. 

Revere, Paul, carries news, 39. 

Rhode Island, colonial government, 
4; colonial conditions, 6; revolu¬ 
tionary sentiment and action, 46; 
military preparation, 70; war 


measures, Governor’s obstruction, J 
79, 80; endurance of Charter, 164; 
judiciary, 167; suffrage, 170; leatj^" 
ers, 209; politics during war, 225; 
postbellum economic problems, 
distress, 226, 483, 499W., 539; and 
confederate impost, 226-228, 477, 
578, 631-634, 640, 642; postbellum 
paper-money contest, 228-233, 239, 
539-541; Trevett vs. Weeden, 230, 
233; and Federal Convention, 231, 
2 33 , 237; and ratification of Fed¬ 
eral Constitution, 238-240, 440; 

religious freedom, 428; primogeni¬ 
ture, 443; and slave trade, 445-447; 
negro regiment, 448; gradual eman¬ 
cipation, 448; criminal code, 453; 
prisons, 464; continental account, 
478; war-time paper and taxation, 
483, 489; forced loan, 506; and 
loyalists, 508, 651; tariff, 511; pub¬ 
lic debt, 542; boundary, 547; and 
impairment of obligation of con¬ 
tract, 570; instructions to delegates, 
607; and independence, 610; food 
shortage, relief, 619; and confed¬ 
erate trade regulation, 644; bibli¬ 
ography: sources, 679; State his¬ 
tories, 681; political, 685; slavery, 
687; union, 690. See also New 
England. 

Richmond, and capital, 327, 339; 
Arnold’s capture, 330, 331. 

Ridgeley, Richard, and paper money, 
530 , 532 . „ , 

Rittenhouse, David, and framing 
Constitution, 149, 150; Council of 
Safety, 253; on tax arrears, 514; 
marks boundary, 591. 

Rivington, James, on non-importation, 
53; attack on Whigs, 58; outrage 
on, 112. 

Roane, Spencer, on Lee and Henry, 

335 - . , 

Roberdeau, Daniel, radical, 103, 105- 
107; plan against high prices, 259. 

Roberts, John, trial and execution, 
256. 

Robertson, James, Watauga, 667; 
Nashville, 669. 

Robin, Abbe, on religion in Massa¬ 
chusetts, 421. 

Robinson, Beverley, confiscation of 
estate, 444. 

Rockingham Ministry, and frontier, 

665. 

Rodney, Caesar, and independence, 
113, 609; in State service, 206; re- 



720 


INDEX 


called, 305; as President, character, 
306. 

Roman Catholics, colonial disadvan¬ 
tages, 420, 428; and early State 
governments, 427, 438; in Mary¬ 
land, 429. 

Roosevelt, Isaac, Provincial Congress, 
86; campaign of 1785, 284. 

Root, Jesse, and requisitions, 476ft. 

Ross, George, in Assembly, 100, 102; 
and framing Constitution, 149; and 
loyalists, 255; Anti-Constitutional¬ 
ist paper, 261; Vice-President, 295. 

Ross, James, Constitutional Conven¬ 
tion, 197-199. 

Royal African Company, 445. 

Rush, Benjamin, conservative, 185; 
on Pennsylvania government, 185; 
and loyalists, 255; abolition society, 
448ft.; and criminal code, 455; and 
prison reform, 459; on Wyoming, 
589ft., on nationalism, 602. 

Rutgers, Henry, in Assembly, 273. 

Rutgers vs. Waddington, 270. 

Rutherford, Griffith, radical leader, 
363; and loyalists, 387. 

Rutledge, Edward, on Quakers, 253; 
captured, 375; in Legislature, 390; 
on postbellum turmoil, 395; and 
retirement, 405; and slave trade, 
447; and control over Indians, 625. 

Rutledge, Hugh, in Legislature, 390. 

Rutledge, John, conservative, 15; and 
independence, no; President, 127; 
and framing Constitution, 134, 137; 
and revision of Constitution, re¬ 
signs, 173, 174, 371; Governor, 174, 
373; career and character, 370; 
war power, 373, 374; Prevost nego¬ 
tiations, 374; escape from Charles¬ 
ton, 37s; on British ascendancy, 
376; and Greene’s operations, 378; 
and loyalists, 390; and Thomp¬ 
son, 401; Federal Convention, 405; 
and ratification, 407; and slave 
trade, 451; and requisitions, 476ft.; 
and legal tender, 488; and taxa¬ 
tion, 516, 516ft.; on sacrifice of 
South, 575. 

Sag Harbor, Long Island, custom 
house, 282. 

St. Clair, Arthur, council of Censors, 
186, 187, 191; and discontent of 
troops, 258, 279; Anti-Constitu¬ 
tionalist, 259ft.; territorial Gover¬ 
nor, 671. 

St. John’s College, founding, 315, 316. 


St. John’s Parish, Ga., and Continen¬ 
tal Congress, 83, 85. 

Salaries, colonial Massachusetts, 3, 
31-34; in kind, 499. 

Sargent, Winthrop, Ohio Company, 
670. 

Savannah, capture, 412; repulse be¬ 
fore, 413; evacuation, 415. 

Schism Act in North Carolina, 437. 

Schuyler, Philip, Whig, in Assembly, 
50; Provincial Congress, 86; as 
leader, 246; candidacy for Gov¬ 
ernor, and Clinton, 247, 248, 286; 
and confederate impost, 285, 642ft.; 
and loyalists, 270, 287; and New 
York tariff, 282; and Jay’s candi¬ 
dacy, 286; and senatorial election, 
296; campaign of 1789, 297, 299; 
Senator, 302; Yankees and com¬ 
mand, 550, 6i6«. 

Scott, J. M., and Zenger trial, 54; 
character, and Governorship, 55, 
247; and Constitution, 129; as 
leader, 245; Confiscation Act, 268. 

Seabury, Samuel, attack on Whigs, 
58; bishop, 426. 

Searles, James, and foreign loan, 507. 

Sears, Isaac, character, 54, 55; and 
non-importation, 56; and outbreak 
of war, 86; in Assembly, 273. 

Seeker, Thomas, and colonial estab¬ 
lishment, 20. 

Sectionalism, intracolonial, n; intra¬ 
state, 192, 323, 327, 340, 342, 361, 
403, 404, 417, 502, 504. See also 
Interstate relations; Represent 
tion. 

Sedgwick, Theodore, and Shays’s reL> 
els, 218; and ratification, 235; aw. 
slavery, 448. 

Seney, Joshua, elected to Congress, 

322M. 

Separation of powers, as American 
development, 1x9-121; theory and 
practice, 165-170, 194, 204; in 

Massachusetts Constitution, 182; in 
New Hampshire, 184. See also de¬ 
partments by name. 

Sergeant, J. D., and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 137; Pennsylvania office, 
256; and independence, 609. 

Sevier, John, Indian fighter, 600; 
State of Franklin, 668. 

Sharpe, Horatio, property, 444. 

Sharpe, William, Continental Con¬ 
gress, 388; on Western claims, 593. 

Shays’s Rebellion, 217; Hampshire 
Conventions, 534; anti-court mobs, 



INDEX 


721 


536; suppression, 536; excuse, 536; 
results, 537. 

Shelburne, Lord, and Western settle¬ 
ment, 665; and Illinois scheme, 666. 

Sherman, Roger, and ratification, 234; 
and slave trade, 491; and paper 
money, 489; on taxation, 492, 516; 
plan for confederation, 623. 

Shirley, William, on Boston, 29. 

Simpson, James, on war losses, 394. 

Skinners in New York, 269. 

Slave trade, and Declaration of In¬ 
dependence, 445; British and colo¬ 
nial, 445; State action against, 446, 
447; in Federal Constitution, 450. 

Slavery, gradual emancipation, 263, 
448; Virginia and manumission, 
339; status in 1776, 446; colonial 
attitude, 447 5 negro soldiers, 448; 
direct emancipation, 448; emanci¬ 
pation movement in Maryland, 449 ; 
attitude of South, 449, 450; aboli¬ 
tion societies, 450; and apportion¬ 
ment of requisitions, 576, 625; 

bibliography, 687. 

Slaves, treaty of 1783 on return, 647. 

Smallwood, William, and ratification, 
318; Governor, 323. 

Smilie, John, as leader, 275; and 
ratification, 294. 

Smith, James, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 149, 150 - 

Smith, Melanchthon, in Congress, 283; 
and ratification, 291; campaign of 
1789, 299; and slavery, 449 - 

Smith, Meriweather, constitutional 
scheme, 144; and paper money, 528. 

Smith, Robert, in election of 1788, 

321. 

Smith, Roger, notes, 487. 

Smith, Samuel, Goddard incident, 
310W.; in election of 1788, 3 2I > 

322. 

Smith, Thomas, and framing Consti¬ 
tution, on it, 149-151, 153 ; in As_ 
sembly, 257, 260. 

Smith, W. S., Marshal, 302. 

Smith, William, of Maryland, elected 
to Congress, 322n. 

Smith, William, of New York, posi¬ 
tion, 51; and Zenger trial, 54 ; on 
Whig triumph, 88. 

Smith, Provost William, and College 
controversy, 263, 277, 295; and 
Washington College, 3 I 4 > and 
Quakers, 428. 

Social conditions, colonial, 2, 12; revo¬ 
lution, 420; bibliography, 687. See 


also Aristocracy; Democracy; Edu¬ 
cation ; Punishment; Religion; 
Slavery. 

Society for Assisting Distressed Pris¬ 
oners, 459-461. 

Society for Promoting Manumission, 

449 - - , 

Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel, movement against, 274. 

Society for the Relief of Distressed 
Debtors, 457. 

Sons of Liberty, in New York, 54-57. 

Source material, bibliography, 679, 
680. 

South Carolina, colonial government, 

10, 11; colonial local government, 

11, 19; aristocracy and sectional¬ 

ism, 12, 13, 42, 368, 369; Wilkes 
controversy, 18; quartering contro¬ 
versy, 23; revolutionary action, 
Provincial Convention, 43, 61, 136; 
and non-intercourse, 64; military 
preparations, 73, 81, 82; Commit¬ 
tee of Safety, 93 5 representation 
and suffrage, 96, 133, 170, * 74 , I 75 * 
201; and loyalists and apostates, 
Test Act, confiscations, 97, 37 2 , 39 °- 
393 , 397 , 399 «-, 4 °o, 4 ° 4 , S08, 647, 
648; elements of transition, 97«-5 
and independence, no, 126; pro¬ 
visional Constitution, in, 126, 129, 
134, 137, 139; executive, 166; judi¬ 
ciary, 167, 202; first constitutional 
revision, i 73 "i 75 , 37 °, 37*5 caP^al 
question, 192, 193, 202, 404; de¬ 
mand for further revision, 192, 
193; second revision, issues, 200- 
202; primogeniture and entail, 202, 
442; lack of poise, 308; political 
contrast with North Carolina, 358, 
368; conservative leaders, 370; 
radical leaders, 371; shelving of 
Gadsden, 372; measures pending 
British invasion, 373, 374 5 Rut¬ 
ledge’s negotiations with Prevost, 
374; surrender of Charleston, civil 
prisoners, 375 5 apostasy in low¬ 
lands, 375 5 British policy and oc¬ 
cupation, partisan defense, 376; up¬ 
land liberal leadership, 377 5 res¬ 
toration, 377, 393 , 394 5 Legisla¬ 
ture of 1782, 389; postbellum 

spirit and turmoil, 389, 395; war¬ 
time paper money, 390, 487, 488; 
stay and tender, Pine Barren Act, 
390, 404, S2S, 57i; and confed¬ 
erate impost, 390, 396, 397 ) 4 ° 7 , 
631, 638, 640; Governors, 390, 397 , 






722 


INDEX 


403, 405; war losses, 394; Greene’s 
political interference, 396; Charles¬ 
ton democratic extremists and mobs, 
397-403; rise of sectional issues, 
403, 404; and Federal Convention, 
405; and confederate trade regu¬ 
lation, 407, 601, 644; ratification 
of Federal Constitution, 407; first 
federal election, 410; colonial re¬ 
ligious establishment, 438; State 
and establishment, 439, 440; and 
slave trade, 447, 450, 451; and 
negro soldiers, 448; slavery, 449; 
horse-thievery, 454«.; prisons, 465; 
education, 465, 468; continental 

account, 478; antebellum notes and 
certificates, 487; war-time taxation, 
494-496; land tax and sectionalism, 
504; domestic loan, 505; foreign 
loan, 507; tariff, interstate dis¬ 
putes, 510-512, 562, 563; financial 
confusion and superintendency, 515, 
5i5«., 525; and postbellum taxa¬ 
tion, 516; postbellum paper money, 
526; public debt, 541, 542; Georgia 
boundary, 590; instructions to dele¬ 
gates, 606, 607; and army, 616n.; 
foodstuffs for New England, 619; 
and control of Indian affairs, 625; 
and confederate supplementary 
fund, 641; and carrying away of 
negroes, 648; and British debts, 
649; cession of Western claim, 671; 
bibliography: sources, 680; State 
histories, 681, 682; colonial, 682; 
transitional, 683; constitutional, 
684; political, 686, 687; ratification, 
690. See also Charleston. 

Spaight, R. D., on State Constitu¬ 
tion, 204; federalist, 406; Federal 
Convention, 406; and ratification, 
408; on remissness of States, 578; 
on disunion, 602. 

Spain, and free navigation of the 
Mississippi, 345-348, 564-568, 601; 
and United States trade, 563; and 
Southern Indians, 601; frontier in¬ 
trigue, 670. 

Speculation, Pennsylvania and, 259; 
land, 418, 666, 672, 673; attempted 
regulation of prices, 617-619. 

Spencer, Herbert, on American Con¬ 
stitution, 118. 

Spencer, Samuel, as judge, 364; and 
ratification, 364. 

Spotswood, Alexander, and British 
invasion, 332; and South Caro¬ 
lina, 547- 


Springfield, Mass., financial confer¬ 
ence, 617. 

Stark, John, at siege of Boston, 68. 

Starkey, John, political power, 14. 

State Constitutions, party alignment 
on, 15, 139-143; New Hampshire 
temporary, 90, 126, 129; New Jer¬ 
sey preliminary 91, South Caro¬ 
lina temporary, m, 126, 129; 

New Jersey permanent, 113, 127, 
129, 137, 164; Delaware first, 113, 

129, 135, 138, 139; task, 117; 

reasons for written, 117; and Fed¬ 
eral Constitution, 118, 172, 196, 
200: colonial precedents, 119; the¬ 
oretic influences, separation of 
powers, 119-121; debate on form, 
121, 125; influence of Adams, 122- 
125; Paine’s thoughts, 123; fram¬ 
ing North Carolina, radicalism, 124, 

130, 131, 134, 138-142, 364; advice 

of Continental Congress, 125; 
quick work, experiments, 125, 138, 
139, 677; conception of supreme 
law, 128, 169, 184; early lack of 
special conventions, 128, 129; lack 
of popular vote on early, 128; 
framing Virginia, 127, 129, 135, 138, 
139, I43-I45; delays, 128, 136; 

special elections in connection with 
framing, 129-131; character of 
framing bodies, representation, 132, 
133; personnel of framers, 133-136, 
149; framing bodies and law-mak¬ 
ing, 136-138; drafting committees, 
authors, 137, 145, 150, 159; char¬ 
acter of Virginia, 145-149; fram¬ 
ing Pennsylvania, 149-151; charac¬ 
ter of Pennsylvania, 151-153; strug¬ 
gle over it, 153-156, 184-186, 257, 
260; conception and use of popu¬ 
lar ratification, 155, 175-177, 180, 
183, 203; framing New York, 158- 
161; character of New York, 161- 
164; length of life of early, 164; 
measures to preserve popular con¬ 
trol, 165, 166; legislative domi¬ 
nance, 166-168; right to decide 
constitutionality, 168-170; undemo¬ 
cratic qualifications, 170; statutory 
provisions, 170; need and policy of 
revision, demands, 171, 172, 192- 
195, 204; sacrosanct, 172; stages in 
revision, 172; early special conven¬ 
tions, 173, 175, 178, 183, 184, 197, 
200, 203; South Carolina first re¬ 
vision, 173-175, 37 o, 371; attempt 
by Massachusetts House, 176, 177; 




INDEX 


723 


conservatives plan in Massachu¬ 
setts, Essex Result, 177, 178; fram¬ 
ing and adopting Massachusetts, 
179-181; character of Massachu¬ 
setts, 181, 182; New Hampshire re¬ 
vision, character, 182-184; Penn¬ 
sylvania Censors and amendment, 
186-189; Censors and violations, 
189-191; Pennsylvania revision, 
character, 197-200, 295; Georgia 

revision, issues, 200, 203-205; 

South Carolina second revision, 
issues, 200-202; Delaware revision, 
204; end of formative period, 205; 
on education, 468; conservation in, 
676, 677; bibliography, 683-685. 

States. See Colonies; Economic con¬ 
ditions; Frontier; Interstate rela¬ 
tions; Social conditions; State 
Constitutions; Transition; Union; 
and States by name. 

Stay and tender laws, Maryland, 
457 , 532 ; North Carolina, 386; 
South Carolina, Pine Barren Act, 
390, 404, 525 , 57 i; Connecticut 
and, 533; New Hampshire, 537; 
Massachusetts and, 549; and im¬ 
pairment of obligation of con¬ 
tracts, 571. See also Paper money. 

Sterret, John, opposition, 317; and 
ratification, 319, 321. 

Sterret, Samuel, in election of 1788, 
322. . ... 

Steuben, Baron von, in Virginia, 330. 

Stirling, Lord, and Governor Frank¬ 
lin, 94. 

Stockton, Richard, and Governor¬ 
ship, 303. , 

Stone, M. J, elected to Congress, 
322n.; and paper money, 53 °, S 3 2 - 

Strong, Caleb, Constitutional Conven¬ 
tion, 179; Federal Convention, 234; 
and ratification, 235; and religious 
establishment, 422 ; and slavery, 448. 

Stuart, John, and ratification, 350. 

Suffolk County Resolves, 36. 

Suffrage, colonial, 9, 10; Massachu¬ 
setts, 89, 1^2; New Hampshire, go, 
132, 184; conservatism and ad¬ 

vances, 95, 96; Pennsylvania, aboli¬ 
tion of plural voting, 104, 106, 133, 
170, 280; element in transition 

movement, 114; New York, 132, 
162, 164, 170; question in framing 
Constitutions, 140; North Car °" 
lina, 142, 170; Virginia, 147, *48, 
,193; Maryland, i57, } 7 °, 204,, 

(undemocratic qualifications, 170 y 


South Carolina, 170, 175; Con¬ 
necticut, 170; Rhode Island 170; 
Delaware, 170; Georgia, 170; Ver¬ 
mont, 170. 

Sullivan, James, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179; and Hancock, 214, 
214M., 218, 243. 

Sullivan, John, Continental Congress, 
62; and reconciliation, 101; and 
framing Constitution, 134; as 
leader, 209; and Hancock, 2i3».; 
character, 220; campaigns, 220-222, 
236, 237, 241; and ratification, 

236; and radical mob, 539. 

Sumner, Increase, Constitutional Con¬ 
vention, 179. 

Sumter, Thomas, partisan warfare, 
376; uplander, 377; under Greene, 
377; in Legislature, 390; and capi¬ 
tal, 404; and ratification, 408; con¬ 
gressman, 410. 

Supplies for army, problem, 616; 
price fixing, 617-619; embargoes, 
619-621. 

Susquehanna Company. See Wyo¬ 
ming Valley. 

Symmes, J. C., and framing Consti¬ 
tution, 137; and Livingston, 303. 

Tarboro, representation, 18. 

Tariff, States and confederate im¬ 
post, 227, 228, 283-289, 317* 387* 
388, 390, 396, 397 , 4 ° 7 , 418, 477 , 
561, 578, 630-634, 637-642; New 
York, 282; Maryland, 315, 316; 
Virginia, 342; as source of State 
revenue, 510, 511; State acts, 510; 
State, and interstate ports, 556; 
during war, 556; postbellum de¬ 
velopment, 557-559; interstate dis¬ 
putes, 559 - 563 - , T . . . 

Tarleton, Banastre, in Virginia, 333; 
in South Carolina, 376; Cowpens, 
380; depredations, 385. 

Taxation, church rates in colonial 
Connecticut, 5; North Carolina 
colonial grievances, 17; and causes 
of Revolution, 25, 38; North Caro¬ 
lina provision tax and impress¬ 
ment, 379, 381-383, 5o6; war-time 
State, attitude and effort, 479 , 492 - 
494; Congress advises, 492; salient 
facts of war-time State, 494, 495 ’, 
increase in rate, 495; in kind, 496- 
499, 5i4; lack of ec l uit y> P o11 and 

land levies, 499-5 01 ,. S3 6 ; blanket 
and apportioned levies, valuations, 
501; unjust, and sectionalism in 





724 


INDEX 


South, 502-504; arrears, 512, 529W., 
537; inadequate collection systems, 
graft, 513, 514; postbellum atti¬ 
tude, 516-518, 534, 536, 537. See 
also, Requisitions; Tariff. 

Taylor, John, of Caroline, and ratifi¬ 
cation, 350; and religious estab¬ 
lishment, 434. 

Taylor, Thomas, and capital, 404. 

Tazewell, Henry, conservative leader, 
335 - 

Tazewell, John, on depreciated cur¬ 
rency, 488. 

Tea ships, at Charleston, 43. 

Telfair, Edward, Governor, 418. 

Tender. See Stay and tender. 

Tennent, William, and disestablish¬ 
ment, 439. 

Tennessee, North Carolina’s cessions, 
388, 595, 671; Watauga, 667; State 
of Franklin, 668, 669, 674; Nash¬ 
ville, 669, 674; Territory South of 
the Ohio, 671; bibliography, 691. 

Territory South of the Ohio, 671. 

Test Acts, beginning, 97; Pennsylva¬ 
nia strife, 250, 267, 276-278, 292; 
Maryland, 310, 315-317; South 

Carolina, 372. See also Loyalists. 

Thomas, Sir George, and Assembly, 8. 

Thomas, John, command, 67, 68. 

Thomas, William, Fort Wilson Riot, 
262. 

Thompson, Benjamin, loyalist, 75. 

Thompson, William, and Rutledge, 
401; on Yankees, 548W. 

Thomson, Charles, and Provincial 
Congress, 40; war committee, 83; 
and struggle over Assembly, 99, 
100, 106, io8n.; on attempts at 
reconciliation, 101; conservative, 

185. 

Thornton, Matthew, as oligarch, 90; 
and framing Constitution, 134; as 
leader, 220. 

Thurston, C. M., on ratification of 
Constitution, 350. 

Ticonderoga, Fort, capture, 79. 

Tilghman, Matthew, Provincial Con¬ 
vention, 41; Continental Congress, 
62; and framing Constitution, 135, 
157; and ratification, 319; electoral 
college, 530. 

Tobacco, pay in, 499; as tender for 
tax arrears, 529W. See also Com¬ 
modities. 

Tonnage. See Commerce; Tariff. 

Tonyn, Patrick, and Georgia, 47. 

Tories. See Loyalists. 


Town meetings, importance of Bos¬ 
ton, 29-31. 

Transition from colonial govern¬ 
ments, ease, 1, 125; from legal to 
extra-legal agencies: in Virginia, 26- 
29; in Massachusetts, 29-38; in 
New Hampshire, 38, 39; in Penn¬ 
sylvania, 40; in Maryland, 40, 41; 
in North Carolina, 41, 42; in South 
Carolina, 43; in New Jersey, 44, 
45; in Delaware, 47; Georgia’s 
tardiness, 47, 48; in New York, 
52-60, 86, 87; local committees, 59, 
64-66, 71, 74, 86, 92, 93; Com¬ 
mittees of Safety, power, 65, 
67-69, 73, 79, 80, 83, 84«., 85; 
flight of Governors, 75, 77, 78, 87, 
93 - 95 ; Assemblies and Provincial 
Conventions, 76-78; midway, 88; 
temporary governments, 88-93 5 con- 
servatism and progressiveness, 95- 
97, 114-116; loyalists and, 97; 

classes forcing, 114; struggle in 
Pennsylvania, 99-108; straggling, 
108; stabilization, 109; periods, 
113; regularity of steps, 114; mod¬ 
eration, 114, 206; as provincial 
movement, 115; constructive move¬ 
ment, 116; multiform or unitary, 
676; conservation, 676, 677; experi¬ 
mentation, 677; success, 678; bibli¬ 
ography, 682, 683. See also Inde¬ 
pendence; Provincial Congresses and 
Conventions; State Constitutions; 
Union 

Transylvania Company, 667, 674. 

Travel, bibliography, 687. 

Tredwell, Thomas, campaign of 1785, 
284. 

Trespass Act of New York, 269, 287. 

Treutlen, J. A., Governor, 411. 

Trevett vs. Weeden, Rhode Island 
case, 230, 233. 

Troup, Robert, leader, 246; and 
confederate impost, 284; and Jay’s 
candidacy, 286; campaign of 1789, 
297. 

Trumbull, Jonathan, character, 45; 
Council of Safety, 79; as State 
leader, 209; as Governor, opposi¬ 
tion, 222-225; and military sup¬ 
plies, 616; and strengthening Con¬ 
federation, 635. 

Try on, William, on representation, 
11; and Regulators, 12; reception 
in New York, 50; damages, 52; re¬ 
turn to New York, reception, 87; 
flight, 87. 



INDEX 


725 


Tucker, St. George, on Virginia de¬ 
bate, 72; and constitutionality, 
i7on.; and ratification, 349. 

Turberville, G. L., on Henry, 355n. 

Tyler, John, conservative leader, 335; 
Speaker, 335; and British debts, 
338; and extradition measure, 344. 

Union, intercolonial committees of 
correspondence, 27; and indepen¬ 
dence, 115; and States, 118; post- 
bellum lack of spirit, 544, 546; 
during colonial provincialism, 544- 
546; disputes during colonial times, 
547, 548; provincialism in army, 
548-551; provincialism in civil in¬ 
stitutions, 551, 552; danger in size 
of confederation, 552, 553; need 
not comprehended, 553; obstacles 
and prejudices uprooted, 553; sig¬ 
nificance of Ordinance of 1787? 
596, 597; and State inequality, 

598; forces promoting, 598, 605; 
influence of Indian affairs, 600; in¬ 
fluence of foreign relations, 600, 
601; influence of foreign trade re¬ 
strictions, 601; social and political 
promotion, 602; disunion fears, 
sectional republics, 602-604; effect 
of frontier development, 673. See 
also Articles of Confederation; Con¬ 
tinental Congress; Federal Consti¬ 
tution; Interstate relations. 

Universalist Church, and establish¬ 
ment, 422. 

University of Georgia, seat, 418. 

University of Maryland, components, 

3 I S- 

University of Pennsylvania, origin, 
266. 

Van Cortlandt, Pierre, loyalist, and 
reform, 51; campaign of 1789, 297- 
3 °i- 

Vandalia Colony, 666. 

Van Dyke, Nicholas, President, 306. 

Van Rensselaer, Stephen, loses ma¬ 
norial privileges, 444. 

Varick, Richard, Rutgers vs. Wad- 
dington, 271; Speaker, 287; and 
Clinton, 287. 

Varnum, J. M., as State leader, 209; 
and confederate impost, displaced, 
227, 631; in paper-money contest, 
230; on Rhode Island and Federa¬ 
tion Convention, 237; and strength¬ 
ening Confederation, 627, 629. 

Vaux, Roberts, on prisons, 459 «- 


Vermont, judiciary, 167; Council of 
Censors, 169; suffrage, 170; eman¬ 
cipation, 448; prisons, 463; educa¬ 
tion, 468; settlement and New 
York claim, 579; independent 
State, 580; New Hampshire con¬ 
troversy, Hanover Party, 580-582; 
case before Congress, 581-583, 595; 
and democracy, 674; bibliography: 
sources, 679, 680; constitutional, 
684; political, 685; claims, 689. 

Veto, in Massachusetts, 3, 182; in 
Pennsylvania, 6, 200; and New 
York Council of Revision, 163; in 
early Constitutions, 166; in South 
Carolina, 174. See also Execu¬ 
tive. 

Virginiaj colonial government, 11; 
colonial sectionalism, 12; aristoc¬ 
racy, 12; colonial politics, 13; Par¬ 
son’s Cause, 21; British debts, 24, 
337 - 339 , 647, 648; Burge sses and 
extra-legal agencies, Provincial Con¬ 
vention, 27-29, 61, 76, 136; dele¬ 
gates to Continental Congress, in¬ 
structions, 62; non-intercourse, 63, 
71; military preparations, 71-73; 
powder affair, flight of Governor, 
76, 77; systemization of govern¬ 
ment, 93; suffrage and representa¬ 
tion, 95, 133, 147, 148, 193; Nor¬ 
folk affair, 108, in; and indepen¬ 
dence, in, 609, 610; Adams and 
constitutional plan, 122, 124; fram¬ 
ing Constitution, 127, 129, 135, 
138, 139, 143-149; Declaration of 
Rights, 146; character of Constitu¬ 
tion, 147-149; endurance of Con¬ 
stitution, 164; and separation of 
powers, 165; upland advance and 
progressive demands, State section¬ 
alism, 192, 323, 327, 340, 342; de¬ 
mand for constitutional revision, 
I 93" I 9S 5 war powers of executive, 
207, 328; poise, 308; and Annapo¬ 
lis Convention, 317; Governors, 324, 
328, 333, 336, 358, 359 5 Henry as 
conservative chief, 324, 334, 335, 
3531 progressive leaders, 325, 326, 
334; Jefferson’s social program, 
325; entail and primogeniture, 326, 
441, 442; conservative leaders, 326, 
334, 335; religious establisment and 
freedom, 326, 337-339, 431 - 436 ; legal 
code, 327, 453, 454; removal of 
capital, 327, 339; Jefferson as Gov¬ 
ernor, loss of leadership, 328, 329, 
333 , 334 ; Jefferson and British in- 







INDEX 


726 

vasion, 329-333; inquiry into Jef¬ 
ferson’s conduct, 333; ascendancy 
of conservatives, 334-336; and loy¬ 
alists, 336, 508, 648; and confeder¬ 
ate impost, 336, 631, 633, 636, 638, 
639; economic relief, stay and ten¬ 
der, 336, 342, 571; issues (1784), 
336; ports contest, 337, 342; and 
requisitions (1784), 337 > 338 ; re¬ 
ascendancy of progressives, 339; 
slavery, 339, 449; later issues, 340; 
Potomac and other improvements, 
340, 341; tariff, export duties, quar¬ 
rels, 342, 510, si 1, 556, 557, 559, 
562; cession of Northwestern claim, 
343, 593, 596; foreign extradition 
measure, 343, 344; attitude toward 
central government, 344; and free 
navigation of the Mississippi, 345- 
348, 564-568; and Federal Conven¬ 
tion, 349; alignment on ratifica¬ 
tion, 349-351, 440; Ratification 

Convention, 351-353; and another 
federal convention, 353; congres¬ 
sional elections, 354-357; Henry’s 
retirement, 357; anti-federal con¬ 
trol of Assembly, 357; abolition of 
quit-rents, 444; and slave trade, 
445, 446; negro soldiers, 448; prison 
reform, 461, 464; education, 465, 
468; continental account, 477, 478; 
war-time paper, repudiation, 486, 
491; war-time taxation, 494-496; 
tax in kind, 497, 499; salaries in 
kind, 499; tax and sectionalism, 
503; forced loan, 506; foreign 
loans, 506; land office and sales, 
510, 671, 672; tax arrears, tobacco 
tender, 512, 529W.; and postbellum 
taxation, 517; and postbellum 
paper money, 518, 528; public 

debt, 542; and New England, 552; 
and Indian agency, 563M.; and Po¬ 
tomac trade regulation, 572; North 
Carolina boundary, 591; Pennsyl¬ 
vania boundary, 591; financial 
conference, 617; foodstuffs for New 
England, 619; embargo, 62on.; and 
confederate supplementary loan, 
641; and confederate trade regula¬ 
tion, 643; and carrying away of 
negroes, 648; and treaty obliga¬ 
tions, 653-656; and foreign rela¬ 
tions, 659; Dunmore’s War, 666; 
bibliography: sources, 680; State 
histories, 681, 682; colonial, 682; 
transitional, 683; constitutional, 
684; political, 686, 687; slavery, 


687; religious, 688; financial, 689; 
ratification, 690. See also Ken¬ 
tucky. 

Virginia, impressment affair, 611. 

Virginia Exiles, 253. 

Voltaire, on imprisonment for debt, 
456 . 

Vote, equal State, in Congress, 625. 
See also Suffrage. 

Wadsworth, James, and ratification, 

234 - 

Walpole, Horace, on American Revo¬ 
lution, 66. 

Walton, George, agitation, 48; Presi¬ 
dent, 93; radical Governor, 413; 
on growth of upland, 417. 

Walton, Jacob, in Assembly, 51. 

Wanton, Joseph, as Governor, 46; 
character and attitude removed, 79, 
80. 

War powers of State executives, 207, 
3?8, 373, 374, 382, 411, 412. 

Ward, Artemas, command, 67, 68. 

Ward, Samuel, on policy of Con¬ 
gress, 609. 

Warren, James, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 177; Adams faction, 210; 
212; anti-Hancock rancor, 211; 
candidacy, 242. 

Warren, Joseph, oration, 68; Com- 
hiittee of Safety, 69; on Massachu¬ 
setts government, 89 n. 

Washington, George, and non-im¬ 
portation, 27, 29on McDougali, 
55; Continental Congress, 62; and 
military preparations, 73; at New 
York (1775), 87; on Henry, i09n.; 
and New York sentiment, 112; on 
Clinton, 248; and Reed, 258; on 
high prices, 259; and Livingston, 
303; and improvement of Poto¬ 
mac, 315, 340; and Randolph, 340; 
and free navigation of the Mis¬ 
sissippi, 348; and ratification, 350- 
352; and Virginia’s federal elec¬ 
tion, 354; radical denunciation, 
409; and religious taxation, 434W.; 
on abolition of entail, 442; on 
social improvement, 442M.; and 
slavery, 449; and education, 467; 
and Phillips Exeter, 467 n.; on in¬ 
equitable tax, 503».; and loyalists, 
507 n.; on returning prosperity, 
541; and Yankee army, 549, 551; 
on overcoming prejudice, 554; on 
State jealousy, 555; on debased 
money, 569; on military remiss- 



INDEX 


727 


ness, 574, 575; on harmony and 
foreign relations, 599; military 
plan, 609; and problem of troops, 
612-616, 626; dictatorial powers, 

613; and strengthening Confedera¬ 
tion, 627n., 630, 636; and arrears 
to soldiers, 634; and Newburgh 
Address, 635; on confederate im¬ 
post, 63 8n.; and treaty obliga¬ 
tions, 654; on impotence of Con¬ 
gress, 661; Mississippi Company, 
666 . 

Washington, William, under Greene, 
377 - 

Washington College, in Maryland, 
3 X 4 * 

Watauga, settlement, 667; State of 
Franklin, 668, 674. 

Watson, Elkanah, on North Carolina 
and ratification, 409M.; on slavery, 

449 «. 

Wayne, Anthony, war committee, 83; 
in Assembly, 100; on Pennsylvania 
government, 185; Council of Cen¬ 
sors, 187, 191; and Test Act, 278; 
federalist, 293; occupation of 
Charleston, 393. 

Weare, Meshech, Provincial Con¬ 
gress, 39; as oligarch, 90; and 
framing Constitution, 134; Presi¬ 
dent, 183; as leader, 208, 220; and 
Vermont, 581. 

Webster, Peletiah, and finances, 474; 
on currency, 521. 

Wells, George, radical government, 
413, 414; death, 414. 

Wentworth, Benning, as Governor, 
10; land greed* 23; ^nd religious 
establishment, 423. 

Wentworth, John, and uncle’s prop¬ 
erty, 24; and agitation, 38, 39; 
character as Governor, 3871.; and 
attack on fort, 70; impotency and 
flight, 75 5 as oligarch, 90; and 
Dartmouth, 466M.; estate and 
debts, 508. 

Wentworth, Mark, and son’s debts, 
508. 

Wereat, John, conservative leader, 
411; rump government, 412-414; 
and distress, 416; and ratification, 
419 - 

West. See Frontier. 

West Indies, United States and trade, 

5 ^ 4 - . . 

Western claims, Virginia cession, 343; 
North Carolina temporary cession, 
388; Maryland and cession, 59 2 > 


593; cessions and union, 592, 595; 
and small and large State grouping, 
593-596; cession of Northwest, 
596; Southwestern cessions, 671. 

Westsylvania, attempted State, 668. 

Wharton, Samuel, Vandalia, 666. 

Wharton, Thomas, President, 156, 
250; reelection, 254; death, 254. 

Wharton, Thomas (cousin), banished, 
253 . 

Wheelock, Eleazer, and Hanover 
Party, 580. 

Whig Club of Six Hundred, 400. 

Whipple, William, Wyoming com¬ 
missioner, 586. 

White, William, and prison reform, 
459 - 

Whitehall, John, as leader, 275. 

Whitehill, Robert, radical, 103, 105; 
and ratification, 293; anti-federal¬ 
ist, 294. 

Wilcocks, Alexander, and College, 
264. 

Wilkes, John, South Carolina con¬ 
troversy, 18. 

Wilkins, Isaac, attack on New York 
Whigs, 58. 

Wilkinson, James, Spanish intrigue, 
348W., 670. 

Willett, Marinus, character, 54; in 
Assembly, 273. 

William and Mary, Fort, attack on, 
70. 

Williams, John, judge, 364^- 

Williams, William, and ratification, 
234 - 

Williamsburg, in 1777, 28w.; removal 
of capital, 327, 339. 

Williamson, Hugh, federalist, career, 
406; Federal Convention, 406; and 
ratification, 410; congressman, 410; 
and paper money, 523; on State 
tariffs, 560, 562; on financial re¬ 
missness, 577. 

Wilmington, Del., free port, 562. 

Wilmington, N. C., conservative cen¬ 
ter, 360. 

Wilson, James, conservative, 99, 103, 
107; Constitutional Convention, 
197-199; career, 198; on Anti-Con¬ 
stitutionalists, 256; Anti-Constitu¬ 
tionalist paper, 260; Fort Wilson 
Riot, 261, 262; and College, 264; 
and loyalists, 275; and civil code, 
455«.; on large States, 598; and 
apportionment, 625. 

Wilson, Samuel, intercameral quarrel. 
309 - 





/ 

INDEX 


2./ *yjjr. 

jy7- 


Wilson, Woodrow, on organic life of 
government, 165. 

Witherspoon, John, on independence, 
112; ana framing Constitution, 
137; and equal vote in Congress, 
625; and confederate trade regula¬ 
tion, 627. 

Wolcott, Oliver, and Trumbull, 223; 
and Wyoming, 589. 

Wood, Joseph, and ratification, 350; 
radical leader, 411. 

Woodford, William, Norfolk affair, 
109, hi. 

Woodhull, Nathaniel, Whig, in As¬ 
sembly, 50. 

Woolman, John, and slavery, 446. 

Wright, Sir James, as Governor, 47; 
on radicals, 48; impotency, 84, 85; 
flight, 93; replaced, 412; value of 
seized estate, 509. 

Wyoming Valley, attacks on Con¬ 
necticut settlers, 279, 586-588; ori¬ 
gin of controversy, 583, 584; first 
war, 584, 585; second war, 585; 
adjudged to Pennsylvania, 585, 
586; settlers’ plans, statehood, 588, 


589; final settlement of land 
claims, 589, 590; bibliography, 689. 

Wythe, George, as progressive leader, 
326, 334; redrafting legal code, 327, 
453; Speakership, 327; and ratifi¬ 
cation, 350, 352. 

Yale University, and established 
church, 5, 426. 

Yates, Abraham, Provincial Con¬ 
gress, 86; anti-federalist argument, 
284; and Federal Convention, 290; 
Continental Congress, 296. 

Yates, Robert, and framing Constitu¬ 
tion, 159, 160, 164; as leader, 246; 
Federal Convention, 290; cam¬ 
paign for Governor, 297-301; ca¬ 
reer, 298. 

Yoder, Jacob, trade venture, 346. 

Yorktown, financial conference, 617. 

Young, Thomas, and framing Con¬ 
stitution, 151, 154; radical, 185; 
and Vermont, 674. 

Zubly, J. J., Continental Congress, 
loyalist, 84. 


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